Women comprise a very small proportion of the financial industry workforce, and this has implications on the way female clients use and benefit from financial services.

The Indian financial landscape is undergoing a dramatic change. India witnessed a surge in bank account ownership during the 2011-2017 period: 80 percent of Indians owned a bank account in 2017–an increase of 45 percentage points since 2011. This surge is primarily attributed to the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMDJY).

However, this push for financial inclusion has not achieved its true objective, which is to ensure that all citizens not only have access to bank accounts, but avail other facilities that come with it–formal credit, insurance, and overdraft, to name a few.

According to the Global Findex database released by the World Bank, roughly one out of two bank accounts in India remain inactive, about twice the average of other developing economies. Worse, the gender gap in these inactive accounts is notable: 54 percent of women account holders report not using their account, as opposed to 43 percent male account holders.

It is clear that hiring women as financial intermediaries can serve the dual purpose of increasing women’s usage of bank accounts on one hand, and their employment on the other

This gap needs to be considered against the more general narrative on outcomes for women in India, and progress therein. While there has been a big shift in girls’ education in the last decade or so–with more girls enrolling in higher secondary and college education–India’s abominably low female labour force participation rates mean that many girls, despite their aspirations, are passing out of schools with no employment prospects.

The debate on low female labour force participation and the reasons for it are intensive, and have sparked an entire research industry. However a study1 we at SEWA commissioned as part of the World Bank’s Skill India Mission Operation (SIMO) focuses on the possible solutions, one of which is identifying work opportunities available for women in India’s financial sector.

Can the financial industry be a prospective employer for the many, now more educated women, seeking work outside their homes?

Why is this a matter of interest? Because evidence shows that women tend to use their bank accounts and save and borrow more if they are served by female bankers and financial intermediaries.

So, what did we find?

First, female staff comprise a very small proportion of the financial industry workforce. The Bharat Microfinance Report 2017 by Sa-Dhan reveals that the total microfinance workforce in 2017 stood at 89,785 workers. Women comprised only 12 percent of the total workforce and 11 percent of the total field staff.

Our primary study confirmed these dismal numbers on women’s employment in the financial sector. Most of the field agents and employees of the financial institutions we interviewed were male. Perhaps the most dramatic example was that of microfinance institutions where we found that while all the clients were women, all the officers in the field were male.

Second, SEWA’s own studies suggest that women tend to save and borrow more when they are served by female financial intermediaries.

A basic income pilot conducted by SEWA in the state of Madhya Pradesh in 2011-12 compared the extent of financial inclusion in villages where SEWA operated through its network of vitya saathis (female banking correspondents) and villages where SEWA was not present.

It was found that in non-SEWA villages where no basic income was transferred, women held only 24 percent of their savings in financial institutions such as banks and cooperatives (figure 1). In comparison, in SEWA villages, 64 percent of women’s savings were in formal financial institutions.

Other internal studies of SEWA in Bihar and Uttarakhand also show a positive impact of financial intermediaries on women’s savings, and livelihoods.

More women put savings in financial institutions in Madhya Pradesh when in touch with a female banking correspondent | Courtesy: SEWA

Putting these two facts together, it is clear that hiring women as financial intermediaries can serve the dual purpose of increasing women’s usage of bank accounts on one hand, and their employment on the other.

The job opportunity for financial intermediaries is tremendous

According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), of the nearly 460 million basic saving accounts opened in scheduled commercial banks between March 2010 and March 2018, nearly one in every two was opened through business correspondence agents or financial intermediaries. Such is the importance of these agents that the National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) estimates 3.7 million incremental jobs for financial intermediaries between 2016 and 2022.

This leads to three important policy insights:

Financial intermediaries are capable of carrying out financial functions and are perhaps better than a brick-and-mortar financial institution in reaching out to remote areas owing to their mobility.

There is ample opportunity for mobile agents to act as representatives of financial institutions.

The potential for hiring women as such agents is high.

Yet, a report by the Helix Institute of Digital Finance (2015) on the Indian financial agent network finds that of the 2,682 active financial agents surveyed across rural and urban locations, only about 10 percent were women.

If these levels were raised to 30 percent, then of the 3.7 million projected jobs, 1.1 million could be taken up by women financial intermediaries, benefitting women account holders in the process.

Women face barriers to entering the financial workforce

Women are not aware of jobs in the financial sector. There are few counselling centres in schools and colleges that expose girls to jobs in this sector.

Not many girls and women think of financial institutions as possible employers, and if they do, the government ones are the most coveted.

Women also feel that they do not have the skills required to make a career in finance; some fear the pressure of targets.

Constraints on mobility and security present further restrictions as does the hesitation of seeing no female peers among existing staff.

A male culture in the sector also serves as a barrier, with male staff often socializing over a drink, late after office hours; bonding events that tend to exclude women.

Managers, on their part, are reluctant to hire women. When asked why there were almost no female staff in his bank, a bank manager emphasised “daudne wala sales officer chahiye” (we need sales officers who are capable of running).

It is clear that most of the obstacles cited above seem to be related to the socially determined roles that women have been traditionally assigned. Both men and women view women’s abilities and aspirations through these lenses. This determines why women are either unaware of the opportunities, or are hesitant to enter the field. It also illuminates why managers fail to encourage women to apply, or when they do apply, only assign women back office jobs.

These barriers call for more awareness campaigns in communities about the importance of employment for women. Equally, some supply side shifts are needed.

They may include:

Employing more female financial intermediaries

Raising awareness about these jobs, knowledge building and career counselling

Raising awareness among potential employers about the advantages of employing women and what they need to do to attract and retain them

Providing financial support to buy laptops, point-of-sale machines, and two-wheeler vehicles for women who wish to become intermediaries

At the policy level it requires partnerships between organizations like the NSDC, the Sector Skill Councils and the Association of Banks to create an ecosystem that works towards employing more women as financial intermediaries.

It also requires collection of gender disaggregated data by financial institutions on employees, agents, banking correspondents, customer service providers and other financial intermediaries and making these figures publicly available to track gender discrepancies in the sector.

*Sanchita Mitra was a contributing author to the larger study that this article draws on.

Footnotes

Between August and September 2017, the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), India, which has been working for decades to empower women in the informal sector, commissioned a study as part of the World Bank’s Skill India Mission Operation (SIMO) to identify work opportunities available for women in India’s financial sector. The study drew on primary interviews with staff of financial institutions and technology service providers (TSPs) to banks as well as women themselves across four states in India: Delhi, Bihar, Maharashtra and Punjab. These were buttressed with desk reviews of other reports, and insights from many small areas studies that SEWA has been conducting on the obstacles women face to opening, using bank accounts and to accessing funds should they want to finance any entrepreneurial venture.

Renana Jhabvala is an economist, with a 40 year long association with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), known for her writings on informal women workers. She served as the Chancellor of Gandhigram Rural University from 2012-2017. She was a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment, and has also been honoured with the FICCI Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1990, she was awarded a Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Sonal Sharma is an urban development practitioner who works on issues of informality, gender and land rights. She currently leads monitoring, evaluation, and learning for an urban land rights project for women workers in the informal economy at SEWA Bharat. Previously, she has worked with SEWA’s affordable housing finance company and researched on the issue of manual scavenging. She was an Urban Fellow at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and has completed her MA in Development Studies from Ambedkar University.

Soumya Kapoor Mehta is a development economist who has been writing on issues of poverty, social inclusion, social protection, and female labour force participation for the past 15 years. Formerly with the World Bank, she has several articles, World Bank and UN reports, and two books to her credit including one on the potential of basic income as a policy for India. Soumya holds degrees in economics from the University of Cambridge and St Stephen’s College, Delhi.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/missing-women-finance/feed/0Saudi Arabia Easing Male Guardianship: But More is Neededhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/saudi-arabia-easing-male-guardianship-needed/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=saudi-arabia-easing-male-guardianship-needed
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/saudi-arabia-easing-male-guardianship-needed/#respondMon, 05 Aug 2019 12:26:31 +0000Suad Abu-Dayyehhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162697Suad Abu-Dayyeh is Middle East and North Africa Consultant for Equality Now

It comes as welcome news that authorities in Saudi Arabia have taken important steps towards dismantling the repressive male guardianship system, which treats women in the country as minors.

Women will no longer require permission from a male guardian to travel abroad and can apply for a passport without authorisation. They have also been granted the right to register births, marriage, and divorce, giving them greater control over family matters. The law also now stipulates that the breadwinner of the family can be either the father or the mother in relation to minors in the application of this system.

Other changes announced relate to employment regulations that extend work opportunities for women, who represent a big proportion of unemployed Saudis. Under the new ruling, all citizens now have the right to work without discrimination based on gender, disability or age.

Another welcome amendment is that employers cannot fire a woman or give notice to fire her while she is pregnant or on maternity leave.

Changes to the law were announced on Friday by royal decrees and published in the Kingdom’s official weekly Um al-Qura gazette.

Although these important advances in removing long-standing social restrictions are to be applauded, much still remains to be done to protect and promote the rights of women and girls in this deeply conservative Arab state.

Saudi Arabia was ranked 141 out of 149 countries in the 2018 Global Gender Gap, an annual index released by the World Economic Forum that measures how women in countries around the world fare in economic and political participation, education and health.

Women in the Kingdom still require male consent to marry, live on their own, and leave prison or a domestic abuse shelter. In addition, women are barred from passing Saudi citizenship onto their children, nor can they provide consent for their children to marry.

The male guardianship system is extremely repressive, treating adult women as minors under the legal control of their guardians, who could be a husband, brother, uncle, or even a son.

Women require permission from a male family member to do many things including enroll in school, file a lawsuit, open a bank account, and access some medical procedures. Women and girls are also subject to strict dress codes and gender segregation.

This creates an oppressive society, both inside the family environment and within the country as a whole. Such wide ranging restrictions have curtailed the human rights of women, depriving them of the freedom to make essential decisions in their daily lives and preventing them from participating fully in society. Treated as second class citizens, every Saudi woman and girl is impacted from birth to death.

The new laws announced by the Saudi government have been a long time coming and it is unclear when the order will take effect. It is vital that these advances are implemented in a way that complies with the international conventions that the country has committed itself to.

Despite this, Saudi Arabia continues to detain women’s rights defenders who have advocated for an end to the discriminatory male guardianship system, and for changes to the deeply patriarchal society including the right for women to drive, which was finally granted in June 2018 with some restrictions to their access to the driving schools and the fees which are triple the price for by women.

Numerous activists have been imprisoned since mid-2018 solely for peacefully campaigning for the protection and promotion of human rights, including women’s rights, in the Kingdom. This has been accompanied by horrifying reports of torture, sexual assault and other ill-treatment perpetrated by the authorities against those who have been detained.

Whilst some campaigners were temporarily released on bail earlier in the year and are still awaiting trial, others remain in prison. This includes Loujain AlHathloul, the prominent campaigner who this week spent her 30th birthday languishing in a Saudi jail.

In April 2016, Saudi Arabia announced its ambitious ‘Vision 2030’ plan to diversify the country’s economy, reduce dependence on oil, and develop its public service sectors. This included programs to promote and strengthen women’s rights.

However, the arrests of women’s rights defenders by the government have created a toxic environment where many have effectively been silenced by fears that if they express views that could be construed as critical of the state, they could face reprisals by the authorities.

Saudi Arabia’s citizens should be free to exercise their civil rights in their own country including advocating for gender equality without the threat of intimidation, arrest or torture. Calling for greater women’s rights should never be treated as a crime!

This week’s sweeping reforms denote a tangible advance in the dismantling of Saudi Arabia’s deep-rooted system of male domination and are a significant testament to the positive impact that brave activists within the country are having, often at huge personal risk and sacrifice.

The world’s gaze is firmly fixed on the Saudi authorities to ensure that the promised repeal of discriminatory legal provisions translate into tangible improvements for women and girls on the ground, and that all women’s right’s defenders who have been charged and imprisoned are immediately and unconditionally released, all charges dropped, and they face no further persecution.

The challenge for achieving gender equity by rebalancing power has to be addressed in different spheres: the household, the market, and society at large.

Luis Felipe López-Calva

At the household-level, for example, women’s ability to make decisions about resource allocation or family planning are critical dimensions of empowerment; in the market, women’s access to economic opportunities, career advancement, and fair wages are of fundamental concern; at a society level, the main focus of this #GraphforThought, women’s capacity to influence decision-making is paramount to progress in terms of equity.

Fortunately, over the past several decades the face of politics has changed in many Latin American and Caribbean countries. Not only have women been elected to the highest office many times in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1990—but women representation is also expanding across multiple policy arenas from the national to the local level.

As shown in Graph 1, from (circa) 1997 to (circa) 2019 the share of women in important policy arenas, such as parliament, ministerial cabinet, and the supreme court, has nearly tripled.

However, as the graph shows—despite progress on average in LAC (the solid line) we are still well below parity level (the dotted horizontal line) and heterogeneity across countries within LAC remain substantial (by the individual country dots).

Graph 2 shows that only fifteen countries in LAC achieved “gender parity” at some point in time in at least one policy arena in the past two decades. For example, two countries in LAC (Nicaragua and Grenada) have had gender parity in the Ministerial Cabinet; two countries (Suriname and Cuba) have had gender parity in the National Parliament; while only Dominica has had gender parity in terms of Local Mayors over the past two decades.

Evidence suggests that enhancing women’s representation in the policy arena can help to bring a gender-lens to policy—for example in issue areas such as travel mobility, starting a job, equal pay, marriage and divorce, parental leave, running a business, asset management and inheritance, and pensions.

For example, research on Brazil finds that women’s representation in municipal government leads to the adoption of more “women-friendly” policies in areas such as domestic violence and childcare.

Given the importance of women’s representation in the policy arena both intrinsically and instrumentally—what can be done to accelerate its progress?

Gender quotas (laws stipulating a required share or number of women in political positions) are an increasingly common solution, and perhaps one of the main drivers of why political representation has increased.

However, even where quotas exist, informal norms may clash with formal legal structures—leading to situations in which quotas remain unimplemented or strategically circumvented.

For example, in our region, we saw this in the case of the “Juanitas” and, more recently, the “Manuelitas” in Mexico, where women ran for office on the ballot in compliance with gender quotas—only to later renounce their position and cede it to a man. Cases such as this reveal the deeply entrenched discriminatory norms and beliefs still held by so many about women’s ability to lead.

Moreover, according to the World Values Survey, on average in Latin America, 23% of people still believe that “men make better politicians than women” reflective of the region’s historical machista culture.

While women continue to face both formal and informal barriers to entering the policy arena in Latin America and the Caribbean—the region represents a positive example of change in many ways.

Not only has the share of women in politics increased, but it has coincided with the improvement of more gender-equitable development outcomes (such as women’s attainment of higher education) as well as more gender-equitable rules of the game (such as gender quota laws).

These achievements have in turn respectively helped to redistribute greater de facto and de jure power to women, which further strengthens their voice in the policy arena and subsequently their ability to make the system more responsive to women’s demands and aspirations.

Early in 2018, India was shaken by the horrific details surrounding the abduction, gang rape, and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Kathua, a district in the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The case is one of a string of brutal rapes to attract widespread media attention in a country where sexual violence against women and girls is commonplace.

According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, around 100 sexual assaults are reported to police every day. Shocking though that is, the actual number of attacks is far higher, with a government survey finding that 99.1% of sexual violence cases go unreported, often due to pressure from family members.

Even in cases that do that make it into the criminal court system, justice for victims is often hard to obtain. In the Kathua case, the young victim was a Muslim from the poor nomadic Bakarwal tribe and the eight accused are part of the local majority Hindu community.

In many areas across India, political tensions run high between Muslims and Hindus and the public reaction to the murder investigation soon became embroiled in bitter sectarian divisions.

Widespread protests were held across the country with supporters alleging the men were innocent targets in an anti-Hindu plot instigated by biased Muslim investigators.

Numerous attempts were made to disrupt the police investigation and thwart legal processes. Some even resorted to death threats and attacks against the prosecution lawyers, witnesses, and victim’s family.

The Bakarwal community which they were members of came under sustained attack and the family was forced to flee the village where the assault occurred.

The situation became so dangerous that the Supreme Court decreed that a fair trial could not take place in Jammu and the case was moved to Pathankot in the neighboring state of Punjab to ensure impartiality in the legal process.

Against this backdrop, the judgment of the Special Court on 10 June 2019 came as a relief to many. Six out of the seven men charged were found guilty, with three sentenced to life in prison for gang-rape and murder, and three given five years for destroying evidence in order to protect the perpetrators. A seventh man was acquitted and an adolescent is yet to stand trial.

On a positive note, the Special Court pronounced judgment within a year of starting the trial, which is a rare achievement in India’s overburdened criminal justice system. While this is definitely laudable, the fact that justice was finally delivered (subject to appeal) in the Kathua case must not overshadow the many obstacles that had to be surmounted in reaching this acceptable conclusion.

Rather, it should be seen as an illustration of the many impediments faced by thousands of survivors of sexual violence across India, especially those from marginalized communities including Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis.

Unfortunately, the speedy and effective justice delivered by the Special Court in Pathankot does not represent the experiences of the vast majority of survivors, and a fair and swift trial in cases of sexual violence remains the exception, rather than the norm.

In 2016 – the last year for which official statistics are available – there were 133,000 cases of sexual violence pending trial and conviction rates remain abysmally low.

The Unnao rape case is another recent high profile example in which a victim from a marginalized group is pitted against those who are more powerful. In this instance, an elected official from the ruling government party stands accused, alongside others including his driver, of raping a girl from the Dalit community.

The rape survivor attempted to set herself on fire in front of the state Chief Minister’s residence merely to get her criminal complaint registered. Her legal battle is ongoing and a criminal complaint for fraud has been filed against her by the parent of one of the men charged with rape in the case.

Meanwhile, her father was taken into police custody, allegedly after he was assaulted by supporters of the accused, and died shortly after, with a medical examination finding injuries consistent with him having been beaten.

So whilst we celebrate the verdict in the Kathua case, we must remember that every day in India, women and girls who have experienced sexual violence and assault are confronted with intimidation, threats, and coercion that inhibits them from reporting their violation or forces them into settling or dropping their cases.

Facing even greater obstacles to accessing justice are those who are subjected to additional discrimination on the grounds of class, caste, religion, or disability.

In 2014, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) expressed concern about the escalation of rapes against women and girls in India, particularly on the basis of caste, and the downplaying by key state officials of the grave criminal nature of gender-based sexual violence.

The situation has, however, failed to improve. In April 2018, over 600 academics from India and abroad joined together to write an open letter to the Indian government, pointing out the rapes and lynchings appeared to be a targeted campaign against minorities and expressing anguish over the lack of action by the Indian government.

India’s criminal justice system remains inaccessible and insensitive to most survivors of sexual violence. These survivors face barriers in getting their cases registered with the police, have inadequate legal support, and are forced to wait years to have their cases heard.

Immediate, systemic change is needed to ensure expeditious trials and day-to-day hearing of cases, such as took place in the Kathua trial. Justice needs to be done and be seen to be done so that all survivors of sexual violence can place their faith in the legal system, safe in the knowledge that they will be heard and their claims treated seriously.

The onus is now on the Indian government to move beyond token action and ensure that the criminal justice system is responsive to survivors needs and is equipped to handle the high volume of sexual violence cases that are currently pending.

To achieve positive systemic change, state officials should work in close cooperation with civil society organizations, activists, and survivors who can provide invaluable insight and expertise.

Better implementation of existing laws, the introduction of much needed procedural reforms, and clearing the large backlog of cases pending in criminal courts, are all key. So is handling sexual violence cases with greater sensitivity, a more accountable police force, and bigger budgetary allocation by the government to end gender-based violence.

This includes giving sufficient funding to women’s rights organizations that are delivering vital support services at the grassroots to women and girls.

There is much to be done but if these important and long overdue improvements can be implemented, it means something positive can come from the tragedy of the Kathua case.

About Equality Now: Equality Now is an international human rights organization that works to protect and promote the rights of women and girls around the world by combining grassroots activism with international, regional and national legal advocacy. It’s international network of lawyers, activists, and supporters achieve legal and systemic change by holding governments responsible for enacting and enforcing laws and policies that end legal inequality, sex trafficking, sexual violence, and harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation. For more information go to www.equalitynow.org.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/indias-criminal-justice-system-failing-victims-sexual-violence/feed/010 digital solutions for women entrepreneurs win support from United Nations’ FinTech Innovation Fundhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/10-digital-solutions-women-entrepreneurs-win-support-united-nations-fintech-innovation-fund/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=10-digital-solutions-women-entrepreneurs-win-support-united-nations-fintech-innovation-fund
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/10-digital-solutions-women-entrepreneurs-win-support-united-nations-fintech-innovation-fund/#respondThu, 27 Jun 2019 14:28:50 +0000PRESS RELEASEhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162219(ESCAP) – A crowdfunding platform for women farmers, online marketplaces for women-produced goods and services, and e-wallet enabled lending were among ten of the winning business models which will be co-funded by the United Nations to improve access to finance for women-owned, managed or led micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the region. Launched […]

(ESCAP) – A crowdfunding platform for women farmers, online marketplaces for women-produced goods and services, and e-wallet enabled lending were among ten of the winning business models which will be co-funded by the United Nations to improve access to finance for women-owned, managed or led micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the region.

Launched by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in March 2019, the Women Fintech MSME Innovation Fund will support the implementation of the winning private sector FinTech and digital business solutions for women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Myanmar, Nepal, Samoa and Viet Nam.

“We received over 100 innovative proposals from businesses registered in more than 20 countries around the region. The breadth of proposals received was impressive. It is encouraging to see how digital finance and digital solutions can be used to address some of the barriers women-led MSMEs face in accessing finance and advancing their business. ESCAP is grateful to the Government of Canada for their support to this initiative,” shared ESCAP Deputy Executive Secretary Hongjoo Hahm.

MSMEs are a vital source of employment and a significant contributor to the GDP. However, more than 45 per cent of MSMEs in Asia and the Pacific experience financial access constraints. Socio-cultural norms mean women-led enterprises have to overcome gender-specific barriers to access institutional credit and other financial services.

“To address the issues that female business owners face, we need entrepreneur-centric solutions that will allow her to grow her business and reach her full potential,” said Andrew Shaw, Senior Advisor, Fintech and Financial Inclusion at the Dutch development Bank (FMO).

The Women MSME Fintech Innovation Fund provides risk capital and technical assistance to pilot technology enabled financial service solutions for women-led enterprises. Out of the 110 applications received, the top 30 proposals were asked to pitch their ideas to an independent investment committee made up of industry experts and regulators.

Over the next year, ESCAP and UNCDF will provide financial and technical support to the ten winning companies as they develop and pilot their business initiatives. In the short-term, the initiatives aim to support more than 9,000 women led MSMEs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Myanmar, Nepal, Samoa and Viet Nam. The winning companies include the following:

“Transforming towards digital economy requires inclusive partnerships and concerted effort towards enhancing MSMEs competitiveness. We thank ESCAP, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Canada, FMO and Visa for their collaboration and support for bringing in the much-needed synergy on advancing women MSMEs through use of the UNCDF SHIFT Innovation Fund mechanism,” said Rajeev Kumar Gupta, SHIFT ASEAN and SAARC Programme Manager, UNCDF.

Similarly, Mr. Arif Qayyum, Senior Director of Social Impact in Asia Pacific, Visa, stated: “We believe that given the right opportunities and support, women owned-business and entrepreneurs can have a significant impact on economic growth. Partnerships such as the Women Fintech MSME Innovation Fund will give FinTechs the support they need to implement locally-relevant solutions to help more women-owned MSMEs thrive with access to formal financial services.”

The Women MSME FinTech Innovation Fund is part of a regional programme ‘Catalyzing Women’s Entrepreneurship: Creating a Gender-Responsive Entrepreneurial Ecosystem’ funded by the Government of Canada and implemented by ESCAP in partnership with UNCDF. The programme aims to support the growth of women entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region through addressing the challenges faced at three levels: enabling policy environment, access to finance and use of ICT for entrepreneurship. Funding support is also provided by FMO and Visa Inc.

For more information about the winning business models and how they plan to support women entrepreneurs, please visit: https://adobe.ly/2X6jWb5.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/10-digital-solutions-women-entrepreneurs-win-support-united-nations-fintech-innovation-fund/feed/0How Effective is a Non-Binding Treaty Aimed at Ending Harassment at Work Places?http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/effective-non-binding-treaty-aimed-ending-harassment-work-places/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=effective-non-binding-treaty-aimed-ending-harassment-work-places
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/effective-non-binding-treaty-aimed-ending-harassment-work-places/#respondWed, 26 Jun 2019 11:08:08 +0000Thalif Deenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162197Against the back drop of widespread charges of sexual abuse and harassment at workplaces– including the United Nations– the International Labour Conference (ILC) last week adopted a “Convention” and a set of “Recommendations” to protect workers and employees worldwide. According to the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO), whose broad policies are set by the ILC, […]

Delegates at the International Labor Conference in Geneva which adopted a landmark Treaty last week.

By Thalif DeenUNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS)

Against the back drop of widespread charges of sexual abuse and harassment at workplaces– including the United Nations– the International Labour Conference (ILC) last week adopted a “Convention” and a set of “Recommendations” to protect workers and employees worldwide.

According to the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO), whose broad policies are set by the ILC, the Convention will enter into force 12 months after two member States have ratified it. The “Recommendation”, which is not legally binding, provides guidelines on how the Convention could be applied.

Rothna Begum, women’s rights senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Geneva, told IPS the treaty needs to be ratified by a couple of states before it can start to go into effect (and it takes another year after the initial ratification to come into force).

The Convention, she said, is an international treaty that is binding on Member States that ratify it, while the accompanying Recommendation provides more detailed guidance on how to apply the Convention.

“The Recommendation is not binding but it provides the necessary guidance for understanding the obligations set out in the Convention.”

She pointed out that there is also a resolution that once adopted will direct the ILO to have a strategy to have a ratification campaign and to help governments, employers’ organizations and workers’ organizations to implement it.

Paula Donovan, a women’s rights activist and co-Director of AIDS-Free World and Code Blue Campaign, told IPS: “It’s breathtaking to realize that less than a decade ago, few imagined that such a progressive convention could be adopted at the ILO at all, never mind by a landslide”

Ironically, she pointed out, the UN’s unique immunity means that its own workplaces won’t be affected, even in countries that ratify this convention.

“But last week’s victory should inspire the hope that the UN might choose to change with the times, and actually join the revolution it champions,” she declared.

Asked about its implementation, Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Chief of the UN Treaty Section, told IPS: “The question of whether the ILO convention on violence and harassment in the world of work is mandatory or voluntary would depend on its own provisions”.

Generally, ILO conventions, of which there were 189 as of July 2018, permit states parties to implement their own treaty obligations using their own mechanisms.

In general, he said, treaties are best implemented where the states parties feel obliged to implement them in their own domestic jurisdictions because implementation is in their own best interest.

Voluntary implementation produces the best results. Where a treaty has mandatory provisions, their implementation would require the creation of a range of international implementation mechanisms, which is not easy, said Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

Asked about the effectiveness of the treaty and its implementation by member states, he said this would depend on the convention itself.

If it is a requirement for the Convention to be ratified for it to enter into force for a particular signatory state, until such ratification is effected, the convention would not be legally binding on that state.

There are many examples where states had signed international conventions but not ratified them, he noted.

“In such cases, due to the provisions of the convention itself, non-ratifying states would not be legally bound by its provisions. Other treaties, provide for them to be legally binding on signature alone. This is a choice that the negotiating states must make,” he added.

Asked if ILO should assign the task of monitoring how the treaty is being implemented, Dr Kohona said” “It is not uncommon for the organization, under whose auspices a treaty is negotiated, to be given the task of monitoring its implementation by participating States.

But the treaty/convention must make the necessary provision for this. Environment conventions generally confer this responsibility on the bodies established under them, he declared.

Ma. Victoria (Mavic) Cabrera Balleza, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, told IPS the adoption of the ILO Convention on Violence and Harassment is a watershed moment in the struggle to eliminate violence against women in the workplace.

When it is ratified and fully and effectively enforced, this will change the lives of women around the world, she added.

“When women know they are safe, they will be more productive, more inspired and more motivated. That would be beneficial to everyone — to the women themselves, to the labor movement, to the business sector and to governments,” said Cabrera Balleza.

“This also proves that the #MeToo movement is or could be diverse. It’s not only for white women or women in North America and Europe. I sincerely hope that more women –especially in workplaces in developing countries will speak up about the harassment and violence committed against them; that all perpetrators will be brought to justice.”

She pointed out that the new treaty has proven that #MeToo can really be #WeToo! The next step is to get all governments to ratify the treaty.

“Civil society around the world should unite and mobilize to ensure that no government will get away with not ratifying it. Equally if not more important, ensure that the governments, the employers, the unions and workers’ associations are all held accountable for the enforcement of this groundbreaking treaty,” she declared.

Asked if the Convention applies to international institutions like the United Nations, an ILO spokesman told IPS that it applies to Member States that have ratified it, “and could be also used as reference for policies in international organizations.”

The new Convention—the Violence and Harassment Convention – was adopted by 439 votes in favour, seven against, with 30 abstentions. The Violence and Harassment Recommendation was passed with 397 votes in favour, 12 against and 4 abstentions.

After the adoption of the treaty, ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said the new standards recognize the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment.

”The next step is to put these protections into practice, so that we create a better, safer, decent, working environment for women and men. I am sure that, given the co-operation and solidarity we have seen on this issue, and the public demand for action, we will see speedy and widespread ratifications and action to implement.”

In a statement released last week the Center for Women’s Global leadership said the progress in moving from widespread awareness of gender-based violence (GBV) in the world of work, to a mechanism providing accountability to end it, is the direct result of pressure and support from women’s rights and labor rights advocates around the world, including the 16 Days community who embraced our global call to action #ILOendGBV.

“These new standards recognize a broad definition of “worker” and “world of work,” which has the potential to address the diverse range of work realities for women; and we welcome an acknowledged link between domestic violence and GBV in the world of work”

An intersectional approach will be required in implementation, to ensure these standards are inclusive of marginalized women workers and encompass situations of vulnerability.

This Convention will positively impact billions of women around the world, and provide a strong foundation for continued progress in our effort to secure equality, regardless of identity, the statement added.

“ We will look to states and employers to develop promising practices, so that they not only meet these new standards, but reflect true leadership in honoring women’s rights as human rights, and the right to decent conditions of work as a human right,” the statement added.

Meanwhile, according to HRW, the treaty was adopted at the ILO’s International Labour Conference (ILC) comprising governments, worker representatives, and employer representatives.

ILO members spent two years negotiating the legally binding convention and an accompanying recommendation that provides guidance on implementing the convention obligations.

The treaty would cover workers, trainees, workers whose employment has been terminated, job seekers, and others, and applies to both formal and informal sectors. It also recognizes the impact of domestic violence on work. The ILC is the body that develops, adopts, and monitors international labor standards.

The treaty would require governments that ratify it to develop national laws prohibiting workplace violence and to take preventive measures such as information campaigns and requiring companies to have workplace policies on violence.

The treaty also obligates governments to monitor the issue and to provide access to remedies through complaint mechanisms, witness protection measures, and victim services, and to provide measures to protect against retaliation.

As the first woman to lead the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a leader in advocating for increased investment and action toward gender equality, Christine Lagarde helps Deliver for Good explore the steps needed to build sustainable financing & economic opportunities for girls and women.

Evidence shows that girls and women play a significant role in boosting economic growth, reducing inequality, and strengthening financial resilience for families and their communities. For example, when companies have a higher percent of women on their boards, it results in greater financial stability for their business. Research further reveals that when women have access to financial services, economic growth booms – creating a ripple effect benefitting entire families, communities, and countries, across generations.

Evidence like this forms the basis for the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) commitment to identify the case for investing in programs and policies that prioritize girls and women. Now, the IMF is releasing several new reports to further demonstrate, and call for, strengthening women’s economic participation and leadership within sectors. It isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do with significant social and economic returns on investment.

In this conversation with Katja Iversen, President/CEO of Women Deliver, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, sheds light on the importance and urgency of investments that advance gender equality and equity for girls and women around the world. As the first woman to lead the IMF, and a leader in advocating for increased investment and action toward gender equality, there is no one more qualified to help Deliver for Good explore the steps needed to build sustainable financing for girls and women.

Katja Iversen: As part of its core mandate, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) works to help countries build and maintain strong economies. How do girls and women factor into this mission, and how does the IMF put this into action?

Christine Lagarde: Empowering girls and women can be critical to economic development in countries.

The IMF has found that the positive economic effects of greater gender equity cover several crucial dimensions of an economy’s performance. It can boost growth, reduce income inequality, help economies diversify their exports, and partly mitigate the economic effects of demographic change. Therefore, even besides the obvious moral and social dimensions, empowering women is an economic “no-brainer.”

An economy should work for women—helping, not hindering.

As well as conducting research in these areas, the IMF has increasingly taken gender considerations into account in our policy advice, programs, and capacity development. For example, since 2015 we have actively incorporated gender analysis and advice in 39 of our annual economic health-checks with member countries, known as Article IV consultations. We are now moving to incorporate gender analysis and advice into broader country work.

IMF-supported programs have contained measures to help empower women economically. With the Jordanian authorities, for instance, we have discussed reforms to help women including more flexible working hours, greater access to childcare, and more efficient and affordable public transport. Under its IMF-supported program, the Egyptian government has increased funding for public nurseries and other facilities to help women seeking work.

Our capacity development work has included training courses, technical advice, and peer-learning workshops with country authorities. These have covered areas such as gender budgeting, which seeks to understand the impact of fiscal policies on gender equity goals.

Katja Iversen: Research shows when women have the opportunity to participate in the formal labor force and have an income, it increases their influence and decision-making power within their families and communities. It also shows that women to a larger extent reinvest their earnings in their children’s health and education, creating a ripple effect that benefits future generations. Beyond the social benefits, can you also expand on the economic benefits of empowering girls and women?

Christine Lagarde: Empowering women can transform lives and society. Women’s empowerment can strengthen an economy in several ways—greater gender equity can support growth, social inclusion, and economic resilience.

A recent study by IMF found that the macroeconomic benefits of greater gender inclusion are actually even greater than previously estimated.

It looked at the economic consequences that men and women bringing different skills and ideas to the workplace can have. Because of these differences, men and women actually complement each other, creating more value than if workplaces were less gender diverse. As a result of such complementarities, raising women’s participation in the labor force – including in leadership – can bring greater gains than raising male participation.

It is estimated that if a country with a 30 percent gap between women’s and men’s labor force participation could close that gap, then GDP would increase by 25 percent. Between 3 and 7 percentage points of that rise in GDP would be from productivity gains caused by greater gender diversity.

It is important to note as well that men would stand to win—because higher productivity would help to increase men’s wages.

This kind of research provides the IMF – and decision makers at large – with a robust analytical foundation on which to make the case with our member country authorities that empowering women truly matters not only from a moral perspective but from an economic one too.

Katja Iversen: Despite the fact that we know women’s participation in the economy drives both social and economic benefits, women continue to face a range of barriers – legal, social, and cultural. For example laws that prevent women from opening bank accounts or social norms that place women primarily in the informal, unpaid care sector. What solutions/recommendations can the IMF and financial institutions provide to tackle these barriers?

Christine Lagarde:IMF research shows that when legal barriers are removed, women’s participation in the workforce increases. In half of the countries studied, when gender equity was reflected in the law, women’s participation in the labor force increased by at least 5 percentage points in the following five years. The IMF highlights these legal barriers and their economic costs in our discussions with member country governments.

Aside from removing legal obstacles, the IMF regularly offers recommendations on other ways to help women participate in the economy.

In many advanced economies, our advice to governments tends to focus on how women can juggle work and family life—including ensuring parental leave provisions, affordable and high-quality childcare, and tax policies that do not penalize secondary earners (who are usually women).

In many emerging and developing economies we emphasize education. Gender gaps in education can be reduced through higher public spending on education, better sanitation facilities, reduced teenage pregnancy rates, and delaying the age of marriage.

It is evident that women are making economic contributions that often are not reflected in the official statistics. For example, women carry out the majority of care work—work that they are often not compensated for financially and for which they may not receive necessary support. The IMF is working on a paper on the value of unpaid care work too help inform this debate.

Lastly, we emphasize the need for greater financial inclusion of women because improving access to finance, including by women, has major macroeconomic benefits. This year, for the first time, we released gender-disaggregated supply-side data on financial inclusion though the IMF’s Financial Access Survey (FAS) which highlighted factors that help to close the gender gap in financial access, such as simplified deposit accounts regulations. The FAS has also identified lack of gender-disaggregated data in many countries. We will continue to work with country authorities to improve the availability and comparability of financial access data.

Katja Iversen: From borrowers to regulators, there are relatively few female leaders in the financial sector. We have heard you champion the importance of gender balance and diversity on boards of financial institutions by explaining that it “will perhaps lead to better decision making and fewer unnecessary risks.” You are the first woman to serve as Managing Director of the IMF. Why does this matter and what are some key actions that can be taken to move toward gender parity at all levels in the financial sector?

Research reveals that greater shares of women on bank boards and banking supervision boards are associated with greater bank stability. Banks with higher shares of women leaders have higher capital buffers and lower non-performing loans ratios. Banking systems with more women on supervisory boards are less likely to get in distress.

What can we do to help more women succeed in finance? It is important to repeatedly emphasize to young women that banking isn’t solely a “man’s job.” Strong female mentors are valuable, as are further efforts to make work environments more women-friendly, including through flexible working practices. As an industry, the financial sector is lagging behind on that front.

More broadly, not just in finance, I used to think that there should not be quotas, but I have changed my mind on that. To work, quotas should be distributed along the hierarchy of a company, and there needs to be a pipeline from which women are selected.

Katja Iversen: How did you become a passionate advocate for gender equity?

Christine Lagarde: Gender equity is a personal and professional passion of mine. As a child, my parents were loving and supportive, which gave me confidence. I also took some risks. When I was 16, my father had just passed away, and I took an American Field Service scholarship to study in the U.S. I was away from my family when we were grieving. I stayed with a host family, and I am grateful to my mother for having encouraged me to take this risk. It is at times like these when you absorb, digest, and enrich yourself. So, you could say that I grew up as an independent young woman.

Despite this, I was aware of the glass ceiling, particularly when I began my legal career. At one of my first job interviews with a major law firm, I was told that, as a woman, I would never make partner. I left the interview and looked elsewhere, but the experience was a stark reminder of discrimination, and there would be other episodes throughout my career.

When I became Managing Director of the IMF in 2011, I began to see gender equity through an additional prism, which is that it also carries large, and potentially transformative, value in economic terms. During my visits to IMF member countries, I have met many inspirational women from all walks of life, and they have really helped to sustain my passion for gender equity, offering a constant reminder that behind all the analysis and advice there are people whose lives can be transformed.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/economic-no-brainer-empower-women-empower-economies/feed/0Championing Social Changes: A Tale of Two Womenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/championing-social-changes-tale-two-women/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=championing-social-changes-tale-two-women
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/championing-social-changes-tale-two-women/#respondTue, 11 Jun 2019 09:20:09 +0000Karessa Ramoshttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161967Karessa Ramos is Social Media Data Analyst for BBVA Microfinance Foundation based in Madrid

This is the story of two women who are positively transforming social norms in their respective societies, as part of the global movement towards gender equality.

In Lima, Peru, Elisa Cuchupoma runs two livelihoods: one is selling knitted hair ornaments along with her group lending co-members, and the other is selling cuy (cavia porcellus), a guinea pig native to the Andean regions, raised for its meat.

In La Vega, Dominican Republic, Benita Hernández tends a small-scale farm where she grows coffee, celery and sweet potato among other crops. Recently, she has also added macadamia nuts in her list of produce and has been receiving loans and technical assistance from the Foundation’s local institution.

This may not seem much at first glance, but in a region where women still face significant barriers to own productive properties and to independently access financing, Elisa and Benita join millions of women fighting for this and other rights that they are being denied.

Similarly, over 1.2 million women like them are taking part in this worldwide action, with the support of BBVAMF, through its six microfinance institutions (MFIs) in five countries in Latin America.

It is true that over the past decades in the Americas, the legal framework in politics, economics and in protecting women from gender violence has evolved positively. In fact, it is the second-best performer according to the OECD’s 2019 Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) Report, which reflects women’s situation in 180 countries regarding discrimination in four dimensions: the family, restricted physical integrity, limited access to productive and financial resources, and restrained civil liberties.

None of its countries classify as having high or very high discrimination. Still, the SIGI’s latest edition1 confirms that to reach Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5): Gender Equality, the region has to address women’s lack of access to productive and financial resources.

This organization, together with the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), confirms that adequate legislation is the first step towards gender equality, as it impacts women’s economic independence, without which, their progress and that of the whole region will never be optimized.

For instance, the SIGI shares that “nine countries have not implemented gender-sensitive measures to expand women’s access to formal financial services”. Consequently, their participation in the social and economic spheres is limited and their potential remains untapped. The report has identified that the region’s economic cost of gender inequality is USD 400 bn.

Benita in her farm.

Likewise, it reveals that the family is the most difficult area of change, to the extent that Colombia is the only country with a law recognizing that women and men enjoy the same right to be head of household.

This means that as of this day, women’s voice and status within their home are subordinated to those of men. However, legal protection is insufficient when women’s own families continue to express negative attitudes about them or the projects they wish to undertake. Social norms and dynamics, based on practices, would have to undergo major transformations as well.

Accordingly, Elisa and Benita are not settling to be entrepreneurs with stable sources of income. Access to financial resources has enabled them to dream bigger and make their progress extensible to their households and communities.

In fact, BBVAMF’s own social performance assessment reveals that its female clients perform better than males: their earnings grow by 20% annually (versus 12% for businesses managed by male entrepreneurs), 37% of female clients overcome poverty in the second year with the Foundation, and although their exit to poverty is slower than that of their male counterpart, they experience a much lower relapse rate.

This is why it’s no surprise that, in their own way, these two women are also paving the road for change, so other women could enjoy the same rights as they do.

In Elisa’s case, her husband’s apprehension to apply for a loan deterred her from pushing her business plans forward. This went on until she learned about BBVAMF’s Peruvian MFI, where she was given a loan without her husband’s knowledge (since his collateral and signature were not required).

This then, became her gateway to economic independence, because aside from financial resources, her lending group (named “Neighbors united forever”) also receives training in financial and business management, and the members have become her second family who support her and encourage her to follow her ambitions.

In return, she has taught other female lending groups how to knit; expanding their skillset and making other entrepreneurial possibilities open to them. She now offers employment to 12 women of her community.

Benita, for her part, knows how lack of information has caused Dominican women to waive their right to be land proprietors, preventing them to accumulate assets and reduce their vulnerability. Indeed, the SIGI identifies “poor, less educated and rural women to be at higher risk due to intersectional discrimination.”

Without adequate knowledge about the requirements, and sometimes not even possessing the basic document of identification, they don’t stand a chance to be legal land owners. This widespread reality drove her to become part of the “Asociación Humanista de Campesinos” (Humanist Farmers’ Association) to help people fix their documentation requirements and afterwards aid them to obtain their land titles.

As the SIGI 2019 states, “social norms can be double-edged swords for women”: they can either hinder or act as catalysts for their progress. This is why the efforts of these two female entrepreneurs, along with those of other women, governments, the private sector, civil society, and other stakeholders are slowly taking the shape of a tool to eliminate discriminatory laws, social norms and practices.

Yet it must be maintained that transforming this social, cultural and historical machinery is a non-exclusive responsibility for women. The whole society- women and men, girls and boys must be engaged.

In this regard, SEGIB and BBVA Microfinance Foundation will jointly host the presentation of the SIGI 2019 in Madrid, Spain, on June 13th, as part of their commitment to drive changes that bring the world nearer to fulfilling SDG 5 and the 2030 Agenda. The gathering will take a broad look at the main conclusions of the report, after which the Latin American context will then be discussed, where Elisa and Benita will share their tales and make the reality of many others like them visible for the world to see: women who have to overcome social and economic barriers to find their way towards economic independence, and thus, contribute to achieving gender equality.

1 The SIGI looks at the gaps that legislation, social norms and practices create between men and women in terms of rights and opportunities. For more on methodology, refer to: http://bit.ly/2I2YDOw (p. 165)

As a wife and mother in Nigeria who wanted to support my family and my community, I began my own farm in 2006. When I began, I never could have dreamed that just cultivating the earth would someday lead to my meeting government leaders, and traveling to meet other women from around the world doing their part to make a difference in their own communities.

Years of hard work, learning and women’s solidarity built to my recent trip to New York City, where I participated in the Commission on the Status of Women. I was there to talk about my work in Nigeria, and my journey from being one individual small-scale farmer, to this international stage.

It was an amazing opportunity that was all new, yet also brought me full-circle and made me realize I am on the right track. Now, as I head home after further travels, my time in New York feels monumental and my passion for this work is stronger than ever.

THE BEGINNING

What brought me is Chileofarms, my farming company that produces, processes and packages rice, fish, poultry, and vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, spinach, pumpkin. To help build up my farm, and the good it could grow, I entered a competition and development program in 2014 called Oxfam’s Female Food Heroes, which gives resources, training and exposure to female farmers.

I was given an award as a Female Food Hero in a ceremony attended by the Governor, Commissioner, Permanent Secretaries and other guests. It was the first time I started to realize how much impact I could really have as a Small Scale Farmer and it was the assistance of Oxfam that made it possible.

During the award presentation, the Director of the Gender Desk from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Nigeria, Mrs. Karima Babaginda, asked me what they could expect to see as my achievements in the next 5 years. l told her that in five years, Nigerian female farmers’ voices will he heard both locally and internationally. I knew I had to get to work to live up to my promise.

Asonye Chinasa presenting her paper “Economic Empowerment as a Means for Social Protection for Women in Agriculture” at United Nations during The Commission on Status of Women

l went back to my community to see how l can contribute to helping other women and l formed a Cooperative called Ogbonge Women Multipurpose Association, where women with like minds came together to discuss the progress of our farms and how we can help each other.

l constructed a smoking kiln with my Female Food Hero award money in my community where my fellow women could come to smoke their fish, package and sell it. This simple equipment was important, especially when we are having post-harvest losses, because with the smoking kiln, the shelf life of dry fish is extended to 6 months.

We also started farming mushrooms together, and donated a portion of the profit to help widows, displaced and other vulnerable people living in our community. There are many women who cannot go to their farms because of the fear of been raped or killed, or their farms were destroyed with nothing to fall back on. We are lucky we are even safe and able to farm in the first place – not everyone is that lucky.

We then started to tackle the issue of loans because our women are always having problem accessing loans through banks. With Oxfam’s help, 42 women from around our state were trained in Village Savings and Loans (VSL), which is when 25 to 30 women come together to save, give each other loans, and share the interest.

This not only brought extra and more reliable income, but it brought so much happiness to our women. l started a VSL group with 25 members in 2017 and today we are 500 women with more still waiting to join. Because of this program, our women can now feed their children and send them to school, without have to wait for the money they make in harvest season.

We also advocated for farmers all over Nigeria – all women farmers decided to come together to present a Farmers Manifesto to the Gubernatorial Candidates before the Concluded Nigeria Election.

We asked candidates to sign this manifesto that agreed that farmers be recognized, and our demands must be met if they want us to vote for them. We have also pushed to change land ownership laws that have not allowed women to own and inherit land.

COMING FULL CIRCLE IN NEW YORK

During the Commission on the Status of Women it was an unbelievable honor to see the experiences and knowledge from women from different countries together in one room.

We shared ideas and what we wanted most, with one issue of common interest being the issue of women being denied American visas to attend the conference., l was overwhelmed with joy discussing issues like land rights for women, challenges facing displaced women and families and more.

l told myself that l have to go back to my country and pass the knowledge to my women and also see how we can get more women from Nigeria to have this amazing opportunity to join this conversation with women from around the world.

I was overwhelmed and honored to be included as a panelist representing Oxfam as the Female Food Hero to discuss economic empowerment as a means for social protection for women in agriculture. Here I was, a woman from a rural area in Nigeria, now having the chance to speak at this global forum in New York.

I gave my presentation in the United Nations building, and to my surprise, there was the same Director of the Gender Desk from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Nigeria, Mrs. Karima Babaginda. l was able to ask her: “Have l fulfilled what l have promised to achieve over five years?” and she laughed and said “Well done, Ogbonge Woman.” I was right on schedule, five years later with my voice at an international forum sharing the stories of my Nigerian female farmers.

WHAT’S NEXT

My time in New York motivated me to do more and keep pushing. As an Ogbonge woman trying to contribute my part towards the growth and development of my community, I would like to work more to bring in more women to the Village Savings and Loans groups, and will also remind women that we need to work on ourselves, because the government can’t do it all for us.

We need to face the problems as they come and that we can jointly speak with one voice. Women’s collective efforts and solidarity are key to make the changes we want to see, in partnership with our leaders.

We are also pleading for more donors and NGOs to come to our aid, because even with a strong, united group, the women farmers really need help. I will continue to advocate for my fellow female farmers, because we each deserve a chance to work hard, feel safe, make promises and fulfill them.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/06/journey-small-scale-farm-international-stage/feed/1Unlocking the Power of Womenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/unlocking-power-women/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unlocking-power-women
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/unlocking-power-women/#respondWed, 15 May 2019 12:17:38 +0000Katja Iversenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161639Katja Iversen is the President and CEO of Women Deliver*

This June, thousands will flock to Vancouver for a global dialogue on how to accelerate progress for girls and women under the banner of power, progress and change.

At the Women Deliver 2019 Conference, the largest in the world for gender equality, delegates will come together to unlock power at three levels: individual, structural, and collective. They will plan for action around how to pull these levers to drive gender parity, especially with regard to women’s economic empowerment.

And not a day too soon. Just last December, the World Economic Forum reported that while the global gender gap is slowly narrowing, the economic participation and opportunity gap stands at 58 percent. Put simply, it will take around 202 years for women to reach economic equality.

The costs of inequality are all of ours to bear. The World Bank estimates that nations leave as much as $160 trillion on the table when women don’t fully participate in national economies.

And we also know the opposite to be true. Research shows that women reinvest more of their income in their families, including in their children’s health and education, than men do—creating a ripple effect that benefits present and future generations.

All this raises an urgent question for decision-makers: If equal economic opportunity is a clear economic and social win for all, why wait 202 years to reap its benefits?

Fortunately, we do not have to wait, provided we take action. The economic gender gap is deep rooted and long standing, which means we have had some years to cook up and test out solutions. The results?

We have learned that if we leverage the power of individuals, structures, and movements to push for girls’ and women’s equal economic participation, we get ourselves a step closer to a gender equal world—along with its dividends.

At the individual level, women around the world are resilient economic agents, overcoming gender-based roadblocks to economic security for themselves and their families every day. Policies and investments that increase their agency over career and finances could go a long way to boost women’s economic empowerment.

And what does a woman with individual agency over career and finances look like? First, she must have access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, including modern contraception and safe abortion—because when a girl or woman can decide whether and when to have children, the chance that she will finish school, get and keep a job, and participate in the economy is much greater.

She also has access to free quality education, including at the secondary and tertiary level. And she has a legal right to resources, including but not limited to the right to access, control, own, and inherit land and capital.

At the structural level, we have also seen tangible progress when governments and corporations move beyond lofty statements on gender equality and reflect their commitments in their budgets and policies.

In 2017, Canada launched its Feminist International Assistance Policy, which targets gender equality in the global fight against poverty. Gender budgeting of this sort—or the practice of earmarking money towards policies that are explicitly mindful of their impact on girls and women – is gaining momentum globally.

Corporations have also taken steps to leverage their structural power to lift women up. Global giants like Procter & Gamble, for example, have implementedpay equality across all levels, from junior-level employees to top executives.

Companies investing in family-friendly, gender-responsive policies have been rewarded with high returns on their investments, including better worker attendance and increased productivity.

Finally, in an era when women-led and women-focused movements are shaking up the status quo, we have seen the ‘power of the many’ rise to demand work environments and conditions where women can thrive. Movements such as MeToo, #BalancetonPorc, Ni Una Menos, and many others have exposed the magnitude of sexual harassment, misogyny, and gender-based violence in workplaces globally.

Through critical debates, these movements have sparked energy and action to end harassment in the workplace, pay women their fair share, and push for family-friendly policies that allow half the workforce equal rights and opportunity as both workers and earners.

Meanwhile, projects like Girls Who Code, W2E2, and Samasource—and initiatives like International Day of Women and Girls in Science—have surfaced globally to secure a place for women in the future of work. This call to action to nurture female talent in Science, Technology, Education and Math (STEM) is vital, since the fields expecting the most growth are known for low female representation.

For example, girls and women make up only 22% of the AI workforce, lag behind men in digital fluency, and are less likely to study science, technology, engineering, and math. This comes with serious consequences for women’s ability to enter, remain, and advance in the workforce of today and tomorrow.

Every day, women all over the world show that they can build informal and formal businesses out of limited capital and resources. The benefits of investing in their access and control over economic opportunity are immense.

The reforms to help women get there are very much on the table—our job is now to create the momentum to scale them up.

This year’s Women Deliver conference will ask participants to reflect on how they can and will use their power for good. The world will be watching. How will you use yours?

*The original article appeared in Finance and Development published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/unlocking-power-women/feed/0Campaign to Whitewash Saudi Arabia’s Image Does Little for Women in the Kingdomhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/campaign-whitewash-saudi-arabias-image-little-women-kingdom/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=campaign-whitewash-saudi-arabias-image-little-women-kingdom
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/campaign-whitewash-saudi-arabias-image-little-women-kingdom/#respondWed, 08 May 2019 15:05:14 +0000Uma Mishra-Newbery and Kristina Stockwoodhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161544Uma Mishra-Newbery is the Interim Executive Director of Women’s March Global, which is a founding member of the Free Saudi Women Coalition & Kristina Stockwood works with the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR), which is a founding member of the Free Saudi Women Coalition.

Amid a high-profile public relations campaign to convince the world just how much the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is modernising – highlighted in last year’s lifting of the ban on women driving – Saudi authorities continue their relentless persecution of women human rights defenders.

A trial that has drawn international condemnation and intensified criticism of the country’s human rights record, features nine women who were arrested in 2018 for campaigning for the right to drive and an end to the Kingdom’s male guardianship system.

Since April 4, 2019, Saudi Arabia has arrested at least an additional 13 writers and bloggers, including two dual Saudi-American citizens and a pregnant feminist, in apparent retaliation against supporters of the detained women activists.

The past 12 months have been anything but the modern, revolutionary times promoted by Vision 2030 and Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, who has led a brutal crackdown on civil society and women’s rights since he came to power. Dissent is absolutely not tolerated.

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi – who had become a critic of the Crown Prince – was viciously murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Saudi-led war on Yemen has continued, prompting numerous countries to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland. Weapons and armoured vehicles have also been used to violently suppress public protests in Saudi Arabia.

Activist Israa Al-Ghomgham became the first woman activist to face the death penalty after she was arrested for peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 2015. While she is no longer at risk of capital punishment, she remains imprisoned and her co-defendants still could face death simply for protesting.

One of the most glaring human rights violations of the past year, however, has been the unlawful imprisonment and subsequent torture, sexual assault, and solitary confinement of numerous women human rights defenders.

Male guardianship has been further entrenched by a recently popularized app allowing men to track and control the location and travel of the women under their control (this app is readily available on Apple and Google Play, by the way). Rather than protesting the app, we should pressure Saudi Arabia to end the guardianship system.

Last May, Saudi Arabia arrested a dozen women’s rights activists just weeks before the Saudi government was set to lift its ban on women drivers. Most of these activists had been actively working for years to help end the guardianship system, and to lift the driving ban, publicly touted as part of the Crown Prince’s reform plan.

But before the ban was lifted, they received phone calls telling them to keep their mouths shut and just enjoy the fact that they could now drive. In June and July 2018, at least another eight defenders were arrested, bringing the total to over twenty known women’s rights defenders in detention.

Among the women who remain in prison since last year are Loujain Al-Hathloul, Nouf Abdelaziz, Hatoon Al-Fassi, Samar Badawi, Nassima Al-Sadah, Mohammed Al-Bajadi, Amal Al-Harbi, and Shadan Al-Enazi.

Not all of them have been brought to trial yet, and others can’t be named. Of great concern is that some reports put the number of rights defenders detained since Prince Salman came to power in the thousands.

According to numerous testimonies, some of the women detained last year were repeatedly tortured by electric shocks, floggings and waterboarding, leaving them shaking uncontrollably and unable to walk or sit properly and with bruises and scratches covering their thighs, faces and necks.

In addition to torture, several detainees have been subject to sexual assault and sexual harassment. At least one of the detained women attempted suicide multiple times.

On March 13, nine women’s rights defenders were finally brought to court with two other women. But none were given access to any legal counsel until the second session of the trial two weeks later.

Foreign reporters and diplomats were not allowed in court. The women found out that confessions signed under duress during interrogation would be used against them.

On March 28, 2019, three women were temporarily released, including long-time women’s rights campaigner and academic Aziza Al-Youssef and Eman Al-Nafjan, who blogs on women’s rights.

Cheering this release only contributes to the Saudi propaganda cycle. It doesn’t change the fact that they were severely tortured while arbitrarily detained for months, nor that they are still charged for their women’s rights activism and will be back in court in early June.

Not to mention that Al-Youssef’s son Salah Al-Haidar was among those arrested this April, along with feminist writer Khadijah Al-Harbi, who is pregnant.

At the second session of the trial, the judge indicated that more women on trial would be freed on bail yet on April 3, the women were again in court, and remained imprisoned. Instead, another round of arrests began the following day.

The next hearing and possible verdict for the eight women on trial who have not yet been freed was scheduled for April 17 but inexplicably cancelled.

Saudi Arabia continues to act with impunity – facilitated by the silence of the international community until recently. The actions of the Kingdom have been largely swept under the rug, disguised by the claim that it is reforming and modernizing.

Saudi Arabia is still a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), allowed a seat at the table despite their blatant disregard for human rights. This must change.

Recognising the jarring absence of action by international actors, civil society has filled the gap by actively calling for accountability of Saudi authorities and ensuring that the women’s rights activists who have been detained remain constantly in the public eye.

The #FreeSaudiWomen coalition, a group of seven NGOs advocating for the immediate and unconditional release of all Saudi women human rights defenders, created a petition which has been signed by nearly a quarter of a million people.

Continuous awareness of the human rights violations in Saudi Arabia is the first step. But there is more that can be done: acting to hold accountable governments, companies, performers and sporting groups that continue to engage with Saudi Arabia’s white-washing campaign, is the other.

Unless a systemic act of solidarity is enacted, Saudi Arabia will continue to use its economic and military power to suppress the fundamental civic freedoms of women’s rights activists in the country. On so many levels, we should be very scared that the United States thinks it’s okay to sell nuclear power technology to Saudi Arabia – with six deals recently approved secretly.

The Saudi crisis involves numerous key players and a solution might seem unattainable, but a world that does not act when a country arbitrarily imprisons and tortures its citizens sets a terrifying precedent for leaders across the globe.

As a start, 36 UN Member states issued a statement at the UN HRC’s session this March calling for the immediate release of the women’s rights defenders and an investigation into the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

While they should be lauded for their actions, together with other stakeholders, member states to the UN need to up the ante: issue a full resolution at the next session of the Council holding Saudi Arabia accountable.

Uma Mishra-Newbery is the Interim Executive Director of Women’s March Global, which is a founding member of the Free Saudi Women Coalition & Kristina Stockwood works with the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR), which is a founding member of the Free Saudi Women Coalition.

In my years in fisheries research in Australia, few researchers were women, all fishers were assumed to be men, “girly” calendars were occasionally pinned on the office, lab or tea room wall at work and the workplace rules of engagement for women were still being worked out by trial and error. I vividly remember when my colleague, “Jessie”, the only woman technician in our research agency, was assigned to go into the field for a week to support a fish tagging project run by men scientists. The men took umbrage and went to the Union to protest this affront to their work conditions. The Union warned them that they could be sacked for discriminating against a woman. So change was at hand – or so it seemed.

Meryl Williams

Over the last four decades, I discovered that some change is very slow, while other change can be very rapid. In fisheries and aquaculture, international gender research has revealed that gender equality is progressing slowly, and may even be resisted or eroding, but many other changes in the sector have transformed fishing and aquaculture and the seafood value chain beyond recognition. Unfortunately, many sectoral changes resulting from global drivers favouring international trade, more efficient production, the Blue Economy, even sustainability, have contributed to gender equality being ignored, resisted or eroded. The resistance is abetted by cultural norms favouring men with the means to amass and control capital assets for producing and processing fish.

Where does this place the women? In our 2019 International Women’s Day OpEd [1], eight colleagues and I said that the seafood industry is women intensive but male dominated. Women workers are over-represented in low skilled, low paid, low valued positions while men dominate the power positions. From the poor quality global statistics available, women are 15% of the primary production workers but rising to 20% in activities in inland water fisheries. Women dominate in the labour intensive processing industry, perhaps reaching 85% to 90% of the total processing workforce. Sex-disaggregated statistics for aquaculture, that now produces more than half of the fish we eat directly, are poorer than those for fisheries. Women aquaculture workers represent a lower share of the workforce in larger, more capital intensive and offshore operations. The top end of the workforce in fisheries and aquaculture is the realm of men, with 99% CEOs, 90% board members and leaders of professional organizations.

International research into gender in aquaculture and fisheries has been fundamental in revealing the detail of the inequality women experience in seafood value chains. For more than 28 years, my colleagues and I in the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section and partner organisations have examined the depth of gender inequality and its impacts on women in studies, conferences and publications [2]. We have revealed the dearth of sex-disaggregated data, lack of time series to show trends and make comparisons, started to sketch the sectoral and economy-wide settings that exacerbate inequality, and experimented with creating gender transformative change in communities.

This leaves us knowing that positive change is not going to happen quickly but also realising that we have to stimulate the climate for positive change before other forces take over. From our collective experience, therefore, we found four revolutionary tips that can energise the system for a change to gender equality.

First, women need to work together for their rights. Rights will not otherwise be simply handed over on a plate. Women will need to challenge their current status – in their jobs, businesses or company positions. They must communicate what they need, in a manner effective for their work and national cultures. Women working together must not allow themselves to be treated as second class. Nor should they emulate men in their power relations at work, for example, by keeping other women and men in their secondary places. High profile cases have shown that some powerful women in the fishing sector have exploited the workers for the same personal benefits as do men in power.

Second, gender experts have an ongoing job advocating why equality matters, and how. They have a duty to raise the level of comprehension of their fellow professionals on why gender equality is important to the industry. Most importantly, this advocacy is not done once-only but requires agitating at every opportunity. We have to become the “squeaky wheel” that needs attention.

Third, training and capacity building are sorely needed to enable a shared gender equality vision. The capacity of current professionals to create a vision of a gender equitable industry is low and has to be raised. When asked why new fisheries policies are gender-blind, fisheries officers will often say they don’t see the importance. What would gender equality look like in my part of the world and what steps would lead to it?

Fourth and finally, a progressive environment of gender equality is not a “women only” realm but one that requires and invites men’s engagement, benefiting all in the transformation. Multiple institutions should be engaged. The exercise cannot become window dressing by dominant actors, e.g., corporations invoking corporate social responsibility for public effect, while marginalising workers representation in the workplace.

Notes[1] The OpEd, “Boosting women in seafood and ending gender inequality: A call to the seafood community – time for commitment and change is now!” was published on 10 seafood industry and specialist sites: Link. I acknowledge my co-authors of the OpEd – Marie Christine Monfort, Natalia Briceno-Lagos, Jayne Gallagher, Leonie Noble, Editrudith Lukanga, Tamara Espiñeira, Marja Bekendam and Katia Frangoudes.

About the author: Meryl Williams has been working in international fisheries research for more than four decades, and focusing on gender in fisheries since the mid 1990s, helping develop the activities and organising the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of the Asian Fisheries Society. She gratefully acknowledges Dr M.V. Gupta (2005 winner of the World Food Prize) and the late Dr M.C. Nandeesha, two men who greatly influenced her interest in gender in the fisheries sector. In 2015, she was awarded the Crawford Medal for her work in international agricultural research. She is an Honorary Life member of the Asian Fisheries Society.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/05/4-revolutionary-tips-stop-aquaculture-fisheries-ignoring-resisting-eroding-gender-equality/feed/0Economic Empowerment of Women Good for Allhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/economic-empowerment-women-good/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=economic-empowerment-women-good
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/economic-empowerment-women-good/#respondMon, 22 Apr 2019 08:37:37 +0000Kingsley Ighoborhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161273Kingsley Ighobor is a writer at Africa Renewal,* published by the United Nations

Attendees at an FAO sub-regional training workshop on gender and livestock in Harare, Zimbabwe.

By Kingsley IghoborUNITED NATIONS, Apr 22 2019 (IPS)

Government staffer Souhayata Haidara enjoys talking about her life in a patriarchal society. Her career is a triumph of patience and perseverance, she tells Africa Renewal with a smile and a wink.

Ms. Haidara, currently the Special Adviser to Mali’s Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, says she was lucky not to be married off at age 14 like some of her peers. Her father resisted pressure from suitors and relatives and insisted that the teenager be allowed to complete high school before getting married.

“In our culture, people believe education is for boys and that the women must marry and stay at home,” she says.

Women’s economic empowerment is anchored by education, maintains Ms. Haidara, who earned a degree in environmental science in the US on a scholarship from the United States Agency for International Development.

“I couldn’t be where I am today without education. I earn an income. I educated my three children—a boy and two girls, now grown. I have a six-year-old granddaughter who is getting the best grades in class. That makes me very happy.”

But Brandilyn Yadeta, a 32-year-old Ethiopian, missed out on education. “I had a baby at 19 and the father traveled abroad without letting me know. Since then, I continue to struggle to take care of my child, which is my priority, above my education.” She is a small-scale trader.

If the father refuses to pay child support for his child, what options does a woman have? “What can I do?” Ms. Yadeta asks with frustration and regret.

Ms. Yadeta and others like her in Africa are unsung heroes—taking care of the family, a job mostly unrecognized by their society. Yet in monetary terms, women’s unpaid work accounts for between 10% and 39% of GDP, according to the UN Research Institute for Social Development, which provides policy analysis on development issues.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) states that women are disproportionately laden with the responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work. It highlights this issue to make the case for economic empowerment of women, which is now a front-burner topic in development literature.

Countries making reforms

A World Bank report titled Women, Business and the Law 2019: A Decade of Reform states that sub-Saharan Africa “had the most reforms promoting gender equality [of any region].” In fact, six of the top 10 reforming countries are there—the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Malawi, Mauritius, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Zambia.

Despite a protracted political crisis, the DRC made the most improvement based in part on “reforms allowing women to register businesses, open bank accounts, sign contracts, get jobs and choose where to live in the same way as men,” states the report.

Mauritius introduced civil remedies for sexual harassment at work and prohibited discrimination in access to credit based on gender. Among the civil remedies, employers are prohibited from sexually harassing an employee or a job seeker while an employee must not sexually harass a fellow employee. Mauritius also mandated equal pay between men and women for work of equal value.

$95 billion

is the amount that sub-Saharan Africa loses yearly because of the gender gap in the labour market. São Tomé and Príncipe equalized mandatory retirement ages and the ages at which men and women can receive full pension benefits—a move that increased the country’s female labour force participation by 1.75%.

The World Bank’s report by no means suggests that all is well with women in these countries. The report merely highlights the positive incremental changes that these countries are making.

The DRC, for example, may have implemented some pro–women’s empowerment reforms, but women in that country still have no land or inheritance rights, according to the Global Fund for Women, a nonprofit.

Theodosia Muhulo Nshala, Executive Director of the Women’s Legal Aid Centre, a nonprofit in Tanzania, tells Africa Renewal that “men and women [in Tanzania] have equal rights to land ownership, thanks to the Village Land Act of 1999; however, customary laws exist that prevent women and girls from inheriting land from their husbands and fathers.”

While women’s participation in the labour force (mostly in the informal sector) is high in many sub-Saharan Africa countries—86% in Rwanda, 77% in Ethiopia and 70% in Tanzania—only in eight countries (Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Namibia, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe) do more than 50% of women own bank accounts, according to the Global Financial Inclusion Database, which regularly publishes country-level indicators of financial inclusion.

Not a zero-sum game

Economically empowering women is not a zero-sum game in which women win and men lose, notes Urban Institute, a policy think tank in Washington, D.C. Rather, Mckinsey Global Institute, a US-based management consulting firm, forecasts that, “A ‘best in region’ scenario in which all countries match the rate of improvement of the fastest-improving country in their region could add as much as $12 trillion, or 11 percent, in annual 2025 GDP.”

On the flip side, since 2010 sub-Saharan African economies have lost about $95 billion yearly because of the gender gap in the labour market, says Ahunna Eziakonwa, Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa (see interview on page 22). “So imagine if you unleash the power, talent and resolve of women.”

Empowerment is limited

Experts believe that women’s economic empowerment is the key to achieving the African Union’s Agenda 2063, a continental framework for socioeconomic transformation of the continent, and several goals in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Aspiration 6 of Agenda 2063 envisages an “Africa whose development is people driven, relying on the potential offered by people, especially its women and youth, and caring for children.”

Taking action

What can countries do to empower women economically?

In a blog for the World Bank, Cape Verde’s Minister of Finance, Planning and Public Administration Cristina Duarte and the World Bank’s Vice President for Infrastructure Makhtar Diop recently encouraged “support [for] young women during adolescence—a critical juncture in their lives.”

The Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents programme in Uganda, which “uses girl-only clubs to deliver vocational and ‘life skills’ training,” is a good example, according to Ms. Duarte and Mr. Diop.

The World Bank recommends, among other actions, the passage of laws that foster financial inclusion. Ms. Eziakonwa believes that countries must expunge laws that are obstacles in women’s way, including those that prohibit them from owning land.

South African journalist Lebo Matshego is urging women’s rights activists to use social media to lobby against those customs and traditions that infringe on the rights of women.

Vera Songwe, head of the Economic Commission for Africa, the first woman to lead the organization, says women, especially in rural areas, need access to the internet to be able to take advantage of new technologies.

The UN Secretary-General’s 2018 CSW report titled Challenges and Opportunities in Achieving Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Rural Women and girls advises countries to “design and implement fiscal policies that promote gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls by investing in essential infrastructure (ICT, sustainable energy, sustainable transport and safely managed water and sanitation).”

According to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former president of Liberia, affirmative action is the way to go. She says that “now is the time for preferential treatment of women,” such as quotas on jobs and access to credit.

UN Women supported a review of Kenyan public procurement in 2013, and Kenya now reserves a minimum of 30% of annual government spending for women. In 2017, through its Women’s Economic Empowerment programme,

UN Women reported successfully training 1,500 women vendors in Nairobi to participate and benefit from the government supply chain. This is one example of an action in line with Ms. Sirleaf’s suggestion.

The quality of jobs that women do also matters, writes Abigail Hunt, a researcher with the Overseas Development Institute, a UK-based think tank. “Empowerment is limited when women enter the labour market on unfavourable terms.

This includes women’s engagement in exploitative, dangerous or stigmatized work, with low pay and job insecurity.” In other words, women need access to high-paying, safe and secure jobs.

“The road to women’s economic empowerment is irreversible,” maintains Ms. Sirleaf. “It’s taking a while to get it, but it’s coming; no one can stop it.”

*Africa Renewal (ISSN 2517-9829) is published in English and French by the Strategic Communications Division of the United Nations Department of Global Communications. Its contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or the publication’s

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/economic-empowerment-women-good/feed/0Women Activists Protest Torture & Imprisonment Under Repressive Regimeshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/women-activists-protest-torture-imprisonment-repressive-regimes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=women-activists-protest-torture-imprisonment-repressive-regimes
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/women-activists-protest-torture-imprisonment-repressive-regimes/#respondThu, 04 Apr 2019 16:03:32 +0000Thalif Deenhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161020This article is part of a series on the current state of civil society organisations (CSOs), which will be the focus of International Civil Society Week (ICSW), sponsored by CIVICUS, and scheduled to take place in Belgrade, April 8-12.

Expressing grave concern over a widespread crackdown on activists, 118 leading CSOs, scholars and women’s groups – focusing largely on the rights of women in predominantly Muslim countries– joined hands last week to co-sign a letter of protest to 48 leaders of Muslim-majority countries.

The letter seeks support for equality of women, condemns the torture of women human rights defenders and calls for the immediate release of those detained in Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The Saudi government has accused the women of “coordinated activities to undermine the security, stability and natural unity of the kingdom.”

According to Saudi law, the women could face up to 20 years in prison or sentenced to death.

The recipients of the letter include 48 presidents, reigning monarchs and heads of government of Iraq, Chad, Kuwait, Bahrain, Nigeria, Sudan, Iran, Maldives, Niger, Tunisia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, among others.

The letter says: “We write as over 100 women’s rights and human rights organizations and activists from the Muslim world, who are deeply concerned over the crack down on women’s rights activists in some countries”.

“We respectfully request leaders of the Muslim world to raise their voices to support equality for women, to recognize the critical role that women’s rights defenders play in this regard, and to condemn the imprisonment and torture of women human rights defenders.”

The activists say they are also “extremely troubled by the egregious treatment of women’s rights activists in Iran, including internationally renowned lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has reportedly been sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes, and Narges Mohammadi, sentenced in 2016 to 16 years in prison”.

The 118 activists who signed the letter are from CSOs in Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, India, Canada, Pakistan, Jordan, Malaysia, Morocco, Mali and Somalia, among others.

The role of CSOs in fighting back repression and human rights violations will be one of the primary issues on the agenda of the International Civil Society Week (ICSW), scheduled to take place in Belgrade, April 8-12.

The theme of this year’s ICSW is “The Power of Togetherness” focusing on harnessing collective action to respond to rights restrictions and rightwing globalism.

Yasmeen Hassan, Global Director of Equality Now, a CSO which advocates the protection and promotion of the human rights of women and girls worldwide, said: “It is disheartening to see how low down the rank Muslim countries come in the UN’s global Gender Inequality Index”

She said the arrests, imprisonment and alleged torture of women’s rights activists in Iran and Saudi Arabia should be condemned by all Muslim States.

“We cannot achieve peace, prosperity, and progress without committing to equality for women and girls, and taking active steps to make this a reality,” declared Hassan.

Zainah Anwar, Executive Director of Musawah, a global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim world, said: “It is high time Muslim leaders speak out about equality and justice being Islamic values, support women’s rights groups in their countries, and take action to end laws, policies and practices made in the name of Islam that continue to discriminate against women until today.”

If Muslim countries had been true to the teachings of Islam that granted women rights considered revolutionary 1,400 years ago, she said, the Muslim world today would be at the forefront of the women’s movement, instead of at the bottom of all gender equality surveys.

Asked for an update, Tara Carey of Equality Now, told IPS: “It is extremely disappointing that the women’s rights activists still detained in Saudi Arabia have not been freed from prison following Wednesday’s court hearing”

“We call for their immediate, unconditional release, with all charges against them dropped, and for the Saudi authorities to ensure an impartial and independent investigation into allegations of torture.

She said defending women’s rights is not a crime and these women should never have been imprisoned in the first place.

Meanwhile, addressing the Human Rights Council in Geneva last September, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said the recent crackdown on peaceful human rights defenders, especially defenders of women’s equality and women’s rights, in Saudi Arabia was “deeply disturbing”.

“Samar Badawi and Nassima Al-Sadah were, according to our sources, arrested on 30 July 2018 and have been held incommunicado since then.”

The prosecutor’s recommendation of the death penalty for Israa al-Ghomgham, reportedly on charges related to participation in protests, is of serious concern.

“These and other arbitrary arrests of peaceful activists for the collective good sharply contradict the spirit of the country’s proclaimed new reforms. We call on the authorities to release all individuals detained for exercising their fundamental freedoms,” she warned, as she singled out more than 45 countries for human rights violations.

This article is part of a series on the current state of civil society organisations (CSOs), which will be the focus of International Civil Society Week (ICSW), sponsored by CIVICUS, and scheduled to take place in Belgrade, April 8-12.

The “Fearless Girl” statue in the heart of New York’s financial district serves as the public face of efforts to raise awareness about the importance of gender diversity in corporate leadership.

By Rakhi KumarWASHINGTON DC, Apr 4 2019 (IPS)

Over the past decade, there has been mounting evidence that greater levels of gender diversity can have a positive impact on corporate performance and economic growth.

Most relevant for investors, MSCI (American financial service provider) found that companies with strong female leadership at the board level generated a return on equity 36.4 percent higher than companies without a critical mass of women on their boards.

For both economic and social reasons, there has been a surge in interest from investors about how they can encourage gender diversity on corporate boards, in the C-suite, and at other levels of management.

To support these efforts, State Street and asset managers of all sizes are developing new tools that empower investors to promote gender diversity at the companies in which they invest.

In March 2017, we placed the “Fearless Girl” statue in the heart of New York’s financial district to serve as the public face of our efforts to raise awareness about the importance of gender diversity in corporate leadership. This campaign, however, is about much more than raising awareness.

As shareholders, we cast votes on candidates to a company’s board of directors and other important issues facing the company. Through this proxy voting process, we have voted against nominees to all-male boards that are not taking adequate steps to add female representation.

In addition, we are engaging directly with companies about diversity and other thematic environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics and publishing thought pieces to educate boards about effective pathways to increasing diversity at all levels of the organization.

Since March 2017, we have called on more than 1,200 companies with no women on their boards to take action. We are pleased that more than 300 of those companies have now added a woman to their boards and 28 more have committed to doing so.

But we know there is more work to be done. In September 2018, we announced an escalation of our board diversity voting guidelines.

Beginning in 2020 in the Australian, UK, and US markets and in 2021 in Canada, Japan, and continental Europe, we will vote against the nominating committee’s entire slate of nominees if a company does not have at least one woman on its board and has not engaged in successful dialogue with us on the matter for three consecutive years.

Why are we giving companies three years to implement changes that we believe would have an immediate positive impact for investors before taking escalated voting action?

Our goal is to ensure effective independent board leadership, which involves achieving the right skill sets as well as a diversity of views. We realize that achieving this can’t happen overnight and that adding qualified candidates should be a thoughtful process that can take upward of a year.

While having only one female director on a board shouldn’t be seen as the end of a company’s diversity journey, we believe that adding a female perspective to the boardroom is an important first step.

The Fearless Girl campaign is about changing the mind-set of boards on diversity—moving the conversation from “Why do we need gender diversity?” to “Why don’t we have board diversity?”—and we believe that adding even a single female director helps to shift this mind-set.

Diversity is a relevant issue for all companies regardless of sector, market, or size. We found that many large companies today are making a concerted effort to include women on their boards, but among smaller companies the lack of female representation on boards continues to be significant.

Most boards lacking gender diversity cite a limited pool of suitable female director candidates as a primary obstacle. However, we believe that current practices for nominating directors, as well as behavioral biases that continue to undervalue the contributions of women in the workplace, are among the leading obstacles. As an example, some boards require that all director nominees have CEO experience.

Fortunately, these roadblocks and biases can be overcome. One best practice commonly used by companies with higher levels of board diversity is to ensure that every candidate pool of board nominees includes diverse candidates.

Also, we are calling on companies to monitor and disclose the level of gender diversity not only on their boards but at all levels of management. We believe this increased transparency will help create a stronger pipeline of qualified female board candidates.

Inspired by a conversation we had several years ago with a client about how to advance the gender equity discussion and capture potential excess return from companies with gender-diverse leadership, State Street created an index that allows investors to achieve the dual purpose of impact and return.

Launched in March 2016, the SSGA Gender Diversity Index is designed to promote gender diversity and harness the potential elevated returns of companies with greater gender-diverse leadership. The index can even be combined with a charitable component to contribute a portion of the advisor’s revenue to support charities that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math programs for young women.

For decades, asset owners have sought to effect change by using negative screening, which means avoiding investing in companies whose practices don’t align with the investor’s personal values or companies with poor ESG ratings. Increasingly, many investors are moving beyond this exclusionary approach and embracing ESG-focused investing as a tool for potentially improving a portfolio’s risk-adjusted returns.

One of the biggest barriers to ESG integration is a lack of reliable and uniform data about a company’s practices and their impact on financial performance. We believe that our stewardship initiatives calling on companies to improve disclosure about gender diversity at all levels of management should play an important role in giving investors the information they need to integrate gender considerations into their analysis of a company.

We are pleased to observe the growing awareness of the benefits of gender-diverse leadership across the investment ecosystem—from asset owners to asset managers to corporations themselves.

According to the Wall Street Journal, as of March 2018—the one-year anniversary of the launch of Fearless Girl—asset managers and owners controlling more than $13 trillion had joined us in making gender diversity a stewardship priority.

But this is just a start. At State Street, we believe that companies throughout the asset management industry should continually look for new ways to use their expertise to further empower investors to promote gender diversity at all levels of leadership around the world.

*The article was first published in Finance & Development, the IMF’s quarterly print magazine and online editorial platform, which publishes cutting-edge analysis and insight on the latest trends and research in international finance, economics, and development.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/invested-gender-diversity/feed/0Making it in India: Women Struggle to Break Down Barriers Starting a Businesshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/03/making-india-women-struggle-break-barriers-starting-business/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=making-india-women-struggle-break-barriers-starting-business
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/03/making-india-women-struggle-break-barriers-starting-business/#respondFri, 29 Mar 2019 14:16:47 +0000Ashlin Mathewhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=160924Ashlin Mathew is a news editor for the National Herald newspaper in New Delhi.

Radhika Baburao Shinde was all of 12 years old when she was married off to a man who was 10 years older. She was sent away to live with her new husband, a truck driver, and his family in remote, drought-prone Satara district, 330 kilometers southwest of Mumbai. She left school and went to work as a laborer on her husband’s family farm.

When Shinde had children of her own—a daughter and two sons—she wanted them to have a better life. In villages across India, where an estimated 833 million people live on less than $3.20 a day, it usually falls to women like Shinde to take care of their children and ensure they have enough to eat.

A chance encounter in 2014 helped her break the cycle of poverty. Employees of the Mann Deshi Foundation, which teaches business skills and lends money to rural women, arrived in her village offering training in various trades for a nominal fee.

Shinde completed a 120-hour course in tailoring and acquired the skills she needed to start a small business catering to her neighbors, in addition to her farm work. This helped her earn the equivalent of $5 a month to spend on her children—a considerable sum for an area where the median household income was less than $70.

Her in-laws weren’t pleased. They didn’t want her new business to distract her from farming. “There were many fights, and eventually they consented,” she recalls.

Labor force participation

The women-run Mann Deshi Foundation, established in the 1990s, is among a handful of organizations seeking to break down social, legal, and economic barriers to women’s entrepreneurship in India.

Despite rapid growth, wide gender disparities in the economic sphere have been stubbornly persistent. The result has been a tragic waste of human potential that has hampered efforts to reduce poverty in the world’s second most populous country.

Perhaps one of the starkest signs of Indian women’s plight is their labor force participation rate, which was just 27 percent in 2017, about one-third that of men. By that measure, India ranks 120th among 131 countries, according to data from the World Bank. Women entrepreneurs do no better.

Only about 14 percent of Indian women own or run businesses, according to the Sixth Economic Census, conducted in 2014. More than 90 percent of companies run by women are microenterprises, and about 79 percent are self-financed.

Women account for just 17 percent of GDP in India, less than half the global average, Annette Dixon, the World Bank’s vice president for South Asia, said in a speech in March of last year. If even half of Indian women were in the labor force, the annual pace of economic growth would rise by 1.5 percentage points to about 9 percent, she estimated.

Small wonder, then, that the country also fares poorly in indexes of entrepreneurship. India ranked 52 among 57 countries in the 2018 Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs, ahead of Iran and behind Tunisia. The index looks at things like financial access, advancement outcomes, and ease of doing business.

“Many times, there are pressures and opposition from within the family due to societal stereotypes that force women to just take care of the house as her key responsibility,” says Aparna Saraogi, cofounder of the Women Entrepreneurship and Empowerment (WEE) Foundation. “Also, the lack of child-care support systems holds women back.”

Lack of collateral

There are other hurdles. Women in India rarely own property that could serve as collateral for start-up loans. They have less education than men, on average. When they do work, they receive lower wages than their male counterparts and generally occupy low-skill jobs in agriculture and services, often in the informal economy.

The potential benefits would be greatest—amounting to a 6.8 percent increase in GDP—if India also simplified its notoriously complex labor market regulations and improved women’s skills, the study found.

“If our economy is to grow by 9 to 10 percent consistently in the next three decades, we have to create ecosystems that support every kind of woman entrepreneur,” says Sairee Chahal, founder of SHEROES, a community platform that allows women to reach out to counselors by telephone or via an app.

The organization has helped victims of domestic violence like Sathiya Sundari, who lives in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. When she left an abusive relationship, she found herself with no means of support. She turned to SHEROES, which helped her start a beauty parlor.

“I didn’t know what it would take to run a business,” she recalls. “SHEROES sent mentors to train and guide me and also set up a crowdfunding campaign to help me begin my business,” Sundari says.

The campaign raised the money she needed in just six days in 2017. Her beauty parlor now earns her about 8,000 rupees ($113) a month, a figure that rises to 15,000 rupees during the December–March wedding season. That’s better than the median monthly household income of 7,269 rupees in rural areas of Tamil Nadu.

Unequal education is another major barrier. The literacy rate for Indian women is 64 percent, compared with 82 percent for men. It’s no coincidence that states with higher literacy rates also have more women entrepreneurs.

The region comprising India’s four southernmost states plus Maharashtra, where literacy is higher than the national average, is home to more than half of all women-led small-scale industrial units in the country, according to the Sixth Economic Census.

Yet even among India’s educated urban elite, women entrepreneurs face discrimination. Meghna Saraogi, who lives in New Delhi, is one of them. She runs a fashion app called StyleDotMe, whose users upload photos of themselves trying on various outfits and get feedback from other users in real time. She recalls her experience seeking start-up capital in the mostly male world of technology.

“There were many who asked what would happen to the business when I got married and had a child,” she says. “Then there were others who were not sure if a business with a woman at the helm would find any investors at all.”

In the end, she got two rounds of funding totaling the equivalent of $322,000 in 2016 and 2017 through the Indian Angel Network (IAN). Last year, StyleDotMe launched an interactive augmented reality platform for jewelry called mirrAR.

Meghna Saraogi’s success story should be the norm, but it isn’t. Padmaja Ruparel, cofounder and president of IAN, says only about a quarter of the fund’s portfolio of more than 130 start-ups are led by women. Of the 10,000 deals they review each year, fewer than a third are brought by women, Ruparel says.

“It is not policy or regulatory changes that women are looking for, but better representation and a change in mind-set,” says Debjani Ghosh, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies. “India has to grow up and realize that there is no need to fear having an equal number of women in the room.”

Still, there are signs of progress in the technology sphere. IAN, for example, has seen the proportion of pitches from women rise from 10 percent four years ago to 30 percent today. Says Ghosh: “Investors have slowly woken up to the fact that there is a need to look at the merit of ideas rather than the gender of the founder.”

Low female participation in public life may help explain the persistence of formal and informal barriers. Women accounted for just 19 percent of ministerial positions in India and 12 percent of members of Parliament as of January 2017, putting it in 148th place among 193 jurisdictions tracked by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

“There has to be a mechanism to have an effective legal structure which is supportive of women’s empowerment,” says Aparna Saraogi, of the WEE Foundation. “It should effectively address the gaps between what the law prescribes and what actually occurs.”

Women often lack the knowledge and skills to tap opportunities, says Chetna Sinha, founder of the Mann Deshi Foundation. To help fill that gap, the foundation runs a help line for women entrepreneurs and organizes mentorship programs. It also runs mobile business schools, a women’s bank, and a community radio station.

“Our program highlights access and control of finances,” Sinha says. “We identify and train women according to their needs.”

Among the foundation’s trainees is Rupali Shinde. At age 14, she married into a family that owned a small leather-crafting business that earned them a monthly income of $56, barely enough to send their two children to school. Seeking to expand the business, she took out a loan of $1,405 from the Mann Deshi Bank, but she lacked the know-how to make a go of it. Counselors at the bank encouraged her to take a one-year business course.

“I became financially and digitally literate, and they helped me with practical solutions,” she says. She now has five women working for her, and her family’s income has risen to $281 a month—enough to enroll her daughter in an engineering course.

The WEE Foundation provides a six-month entrepreneurship mentorship program to both tech and nontech start-ups free of charge based on applications from around the country, says Aparna Saraogi. The program is funded by India’s Department of Science and Technology.

“We have mentored more than 500 women-led start-ups since 2016 and enabled more than 5,000 women with skills to ensure that they can earn a living,” she says.

Some vocational programs in India still favor men. Skill India, a government-sponsored program, teaches young men trades such as plumbing, masonry, and welding. But courses for women focus on beauty, wellness, and cooking, and none aim to develop entrepreneurs.

Women like Radhika Baburao Shinde have seen their careers take unexpected turns. She expanded her modest tailoring business with help from the Mann Deshi Foundation, adding a cloth shop. Then, she took a free, six-day course in animal husbandry at a local agricultural research institute after Mann Deshi counselors told her that it would help her improve her income.

“Once I came back, I started going to nearby homes to check their goats and to tell them about artificial insemination, sonograms. I inseminated 100 goats free of cost, and when these goats gave birth to healthy kids, people started trusting me. I started to get calls from nearby villages too.” Now she earns about 8,000 rupees a month—and hopes to save enough to send her 16-year-old daughter to college.

Entrepreneurs like Shinde are blazing a path for the next generation of women. Not only are they making sure their own daughters get the education they need to start businesses of their own, but they are serving as role models for the wider community, offering Indian women hope for a brighter future.

*The article was first published in Finance & Development, the IMF’s quarterly print magazine and online editorial platform, which publishes cutting-edge analysis and insight on the latest trends and research in international finance, economics, and development.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author; they do not necessarily reflect IMF policy.

As girls, we were raised with the belief that we could accomplish anything, and that no barrier was insurmountable. Yet, for so many women, the reality doesn’t quite meet their aspirations. Things weren’t exactly equal in the relatively conservative middle-class society in India where we both grew up.

But we thought of gender inequality as largely an issue of social justice. It was only after we started delving into the topic that we came to realize that it is an equally significant economic issue.

Women make up almost half of the world’s working-age population of nearly 5 billion people. But only about 50 percent of those women participate in the labor force, compared with 80 percent of men.

Not only is female labor force participation lower, but women who are paid for their work are disproportionately employed in the informal sector—especially in developing economies—where employers are subject to fewer regulations, leaving workers more vulnerable to lower wages and job losses.

Furthermore, even in the formal sector, women doing the same work and having the same level of education earn less than their male counterparts. And, because women generally spend less time in the paid labor market, they have lower pensions and face a higher risk of poverty in old age.

Among those who do work, few rise to senior positions or start their own businesses. Women also shoulder a higher share of unpaid work within the family, including childcare and domestic tasks, which can limit their opportunity to engage in paid work and constrain their options when they do.

The IMF’s research highlights how the uneven playing field between women and men imposes large costs on the global economy. Early IMF studies on the economic impact of gender gaps assumed that men and women were likely to be born with the same potential, but that disparities in access to education, health care, and finance and technology; legal rights; and social and cultural factors prevented women from realizing that potential. In turn, these barriers facing women shrank the pool of talent available to employers (Kochhar, Jain-Chandra, and Newiak 2017).

The result was lower productivity and lower economic growth. The losses to an economy from economic disempowerment of women were estimated to range from 10 percent of GDP in advanced economies to more than 30 percent in South Asia and in the Middle East and North Africa.

More recent research suggests that the economic benefits of bringing more women into the labor force exceed previous estimates. This is because women and men may have the same potential, but they bring different skills and ideas—that are economically valuable—to the table (Ostry and others 2018).

Gender differences may reflect social norms and their impact on upbringing, social interactions, risk preferences, and response to incentives. For instance, studies have found women to be more risk averse, reflecting greater fear of failure, and less competitive.

Similarly, banks with higher shares of women board members have thicker capital buffers, a lower proportion of nonperforming loans, and greater resistance to stress, possibly because having more women in executive positions contributes to diversity and complementarity of thought, leading to better decision-making.

Drawing on macroeconomic, sectoral, and firm-level data, a recent IMF study (Ostry and others 2018) suggests that men and women complement each other in the workplace in terms of different skills and perspectives, including different attitudes toward risk and collaboration.

As a result, increasing women’s employment boosts growth and incomes more than previously estimated, exceeding the improvement that comes simply from adding workers.

Among countries where gaps in participation rates are the largest, closing them adds 35 percent to GDP, on average. Four-fifths of the gains come from adding workers to the labor force, but fully one-fifth arises from the boost to productivity brought by greater gender diversity.

The study also shows that increasing women’s labor force participation produces large gains in economic welfare, which account for changes in consumption goods, home production, and leisure time; these gains exceed 20 percent in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (see Chart 1).

Another important finding: when more women participate in the labor force, men also benefit. Why? Because women’s complementary skills raise productivity, boosting wages for everyone.

This increase in productivity more than makes up for the decline in wages that might be expected when more workers are competing for jobs.

But simply bringing more women into the workforce may not be enough. A recent IMF study sounds a cautionary note on the challenges women face in a rapidly changing labor market (Brussevich and others 2018).

Digitalization, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are hollowing out jobs that involve routine and repetitive tasks while increasing the value of jobs involving management and cognitive skills.

Hard-won gains from policies to increase the number of women in the paid workforce and close wage gaps may be quickly eroded if women are overrepresented in jobs at high risk of automation.

Indeed, the study finds that women perform more routine tasks than men across all sectors and occupations, although there is significant variation across countries.

The risk of displacement is particularly high for less-educated women, those aged 40 and above, and those in low-skill clerical and sales jobs.

Meanwhile, women across sectors and occupations are underrepresented in professional and managerial positions that are at lower risk of displacement by technology.

Globally, women hold fewer than 20 percent of board seats in banks and bank supervision agencies (Sahay and Čihák 2018) and account for fewer than 2 percent of bank CEOs.

In the fast-growing tech sector, women are 15 percent less likely than men to be managers and professionals and 19 percent more likely to be clerks and service workers (see Chart 2).

Given the current state of technology, the study estimates that 26 million women’s jobs in 30 countries (28 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development plus Cyprus and Singapore) have a greater than 70 percent chance of being displaced by technology within two decades.

On a global scale, this suggests that 180 million women’s jobs are at risk. While more men than women are at risk of being displaced by automation, the number of female jobs lost represents a larger proportion of the female labor force.

What can be done? Because gender inequality is so multifaceted, there is no single remedy, and the best policy approach will vary across countries, depending on the level of economic development, existing gender gaps, and the speed at which the new technology affects the economy. Three broad areas can be highlighted:

First, policies to bring more women into the workforce: A range of institutional, legal, regulatory, and fiscal policy levers have been shown to boost female labor force participation.

While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, policies should seek to foster opportunity and remove barriers. Policies and infrastructure that make it easier for women to reconcile work and family life are particularly effective.

Emerging market and developing economies should

● Invest in infrastructure. In rural South Africa, for example, electrification increased female labor force participation by 9 percent. In India, building adequate sanitation facilities narrowed gender gaps in education and in female labor force participation. Mexico introduced public buses exclusively for women to ensure that they could travel safely.

● Support female entrepreneurs by increasing their access to finance. Women often face more restrictive collateral requirements, shorter maturity of loans, and higher interest rates than men (see “Banking on the Future of Women” in this issue of F&D). Initiatives such as Malaysia’s Women Entrepreneur Financing Programme and Chile’s simplified deposit accounts have helped close the gender gap in borrowing rates.

● Push for greater parity between maternity and paternity leave. In Sweden, this has helped mothers return to work more rapidly and has shifted underlying gender norms about parenting.

● Promote access to affordable, high-quality childcare. An example is Japan, which expanded childcare leave benefits from 50 percent to 67 percent of salary. Research shows that cutting the cost of childcare by half could increase the number of young mothers in the labor market by 10 percent.

There is also considerable evidence that women are more responsive to specific tax policies than men. These include policies that do not penalize the secondary earner, who is still most likely to be female, by replacing family taxation with individual taxation, as Canada, Italy, and Sweden have done.

Tax relief measures for low-income families have also been found to increase employment rates for women. The reason: tax relief reduces the tax burden and increases after-tax earnings for women, thus increasing the incentive for women to join, or remain in, the labor force.

Examples include the earned income tax credit in the United States and a combination of tax credits and transfers in Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Second, policies to provide women with the right skills and to empower women in the workplace: Gender parity in investments in education and health are necessary to ensure that women can obtain quality jobs.

In India, for instance, IMF research suggests that female labor force participation would rise by 2 percentage points if Indian states increased education spending by 1 percent of GDP. Building skills early would also provide the most important safeguard against displacement by technology and allow women to benefit from new work opportunities.

For those already in the workforce, fiscal instruments such as tax deductions for training in the Netherlands and portable individual learning accounts in France can remove barriers to lifelong learning. Countries could also consider subsidizing training by private companies via dedicated payroll taxes and public grants.

Concerted efforts are needed to provide women with more opportunities to rise into managerial and leadership roles by setting relevant recruitment and retention targets for organizations, setting promotion quotas as was done in Norway, and creating mentorship and training programs.

Large gender gaps persist in access to the digital technology that creates new job opportunities: 60 percent of the global population, mostly women in emerging market and developing economies, still have no access to the internet; 250 million fewer women are online than men.

Public and private investment will be essential to support technological adoption and close digital gender gaps. Finland’s approach to ensuring universal access to broadband connectivity, digital education for all, and digital access to business and government services is a good example of a comprehensive approach to closing the gender digital divide.

Third, easing transitions for displaced workers: Given that female workers face a particularly high risk of being displaced through automation, it will be essential to ensure equal support for displaced men and women through labor market policies to improve skills, connect workers with jobs, and promote job creation.

Social protection systems will also need to adapt to more flexible forms of work, such as telework. To address deteriorating income security associated with rapid technological change, some advanced economies may consider expanding noncontributory pensions and adopting basic income guarantees.

Recent decades have seen considerable progress in leveling the playing field for economic opportunities, but much more work remains to be done. The good news is that countries across the globe have embraced the imperative for gender equality.

Policymakers, governments, and corporations now recognize the benefits for economic growth and development of giving women equal opportunities, and they are seeking to improve their policies and practices in this area.

The IMF is committed to working with other international organizations, governments, civil society organizations, and the private sector to reduce barriers to gender equality by providing policy advice and analysis.

Piped water has made life easier for this boy, who no longer has to help his parents fetch water from afar. Credit: Vannaphone Sitthirath/IPS

By Monika Weber-FahrSTOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 18 2019 (IPS)

I am drafting this on International Women’s Day – March 8 – with an eye towards World Water Day on March 22. On International Women’s Day we celebrate progress in gender equality. At the same time, we recognize how much remains to be done: how many women remain excluded from decision-making across many professions. Changing this is urgent. Water – clean and accessible – is getting scarcer at an alarming rate. While working to change this, we cannot afford to exclude women.

The water community has made political statements on gender equality, going back to 1992 when the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development included Principle #3, affirming that “Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water.” Was this merely lip service? A developing world woman carry a jug of water on her head remains a stubborn image of women and water. To be sure, this image points to a daily tragedy: the fact that hundreds of millions of people do not have a convenient source of water, and that women and girls spend hours each day collecting water, losing productive time and opportunities, and living in fear for their safety. Like others, Global Water Partnership (GWP) commends the people and organisations that provide infrastructure to bring clean water nearer to communities.

GWP Executive Secretary Dr. Monika Weber-Fahr

Working to ensure access to safe water and sanitation is a challenge that goes beyond infrastructure. Water needs to be managed. And only inclusive water management, as GWP’s Gender Action Piece points out, has the potential to reduce inequalities, uphold human rights, and improve sustainability. “If segments of the population are excluded, projects are likely to fail. Why? Without considering the diverse needs and practices of a community, it is unlikely that results will be sustainable, and deliver the human development and economic outcomes intended.”

It’s kind of simple, but not often applied: “Nothing about them without them” as we say in the Gender Action Piece. Easy to remember.

The principle applies to all water management. Getting our water resources back in shape is a huge task – rivers and aquifers need attention so they can provide the water we need to grow the crops that will feed our growing population, the water we need for growing cities, the water we need for growing industries. We cannot afford to exclude anyone who uses water or who has a solution: the poor, youth, indigenous peoples – any minority may hold a key to the future of water.

Today’s World Water Day theme is “Leaving no one behind,” a theme designated by our close partners at UN-Water. Today, says UN-Water, “billions of people are still living without safe water – their households, schools, workplaces, farms and factories struggling to survive and thrive. Marginalized groups – women, children, refugees, indigenous peoples, disabled people and many others – are often overlooked, and sometimes face discrimination, as they try to access and manage the safe water they need.”

“Leaving no one behind” is the central promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. That agenda includes the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), one of which – Number 6 – is about water. Part of that goal zeros in on work that has been piloted by GWP and its thousands of member organizations: integrating water resources management across all people and organizations that have a stake in water. The genius of this approach is that it has always been about inclusion.

So how does one practice “integrated” water resources management? Again, kind of simple: to achieve efficient, equitable, and sustainable water management, all stakeholders must have genuine opportunities to actively participate in water management decisions. Only then can decisions be taken that reflect how we all value water – reflecting its social value, its economic value, and its environmental value. In fact, it is interesting to watch how decisions change once we grasp the true value of water – which happens when those sitting at the table represent the full, rich, spectrum of society. GWP sees this whenever our Country Water Partnerships convene stakeholders to debate such decisions.

GWP was recently evaluated for how we do our work. I was glad to see that the evaluation found our network to be of “unique breadth and depth” – providing us, the evaluators said, with singular “legitimacy and reputation.” How? By working as a ‘neutral’ convener of stakeholders, as a convener who speaks “nothing about them without them.”

There are only 12 years to go when all the SDGs should be achieved by 2030. That’s a huge challenge, requiring a massive transformation to the way we run our planet. There are many unsung heroes and heroines whose hard work, grit, and determination create a safe space for people to come together to build common ground for water management decisions, working with everyone, everywhere. Want to join us at the table?

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/03/simple-requires-determination/feed/0Women, Work, and Migrationhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/03/women-work-migration/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=women-work-migration
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/03/women-work-migration/#respondTue, 12 Mar 2019 14:34:23 +0000Annette Francis and Dheeraj Dubeyhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=160578Social barriers have historically been blamed for the lack of gender parity in the workplace. But there are other dimensions to this age-old discourse. India has of one of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world. Between 2005-06 and 2015-2016 this figure has reduced by almost 12 percent. Economists use the feminisation […]

India has of one of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world | Photo courtesy: Pratham

By Annette Francis and Dheeraj DubeyMUMBAI, India, Mar 12 2019 (IPS)

Social barriers have historically been blamed for the lack of gender parity in the workplace. But there are other dimensions to this age-old discourse.

India has of one of the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world. Between 2005-06 and 2015-2016 this figure has reduced by almost 12 percent. Economists use the feminisation U-hypothesisto explain this trend; it predicts that the women workforce participation of a developing economy declines and rises again later due to the changing nature of socio-economic factors within the national ecosystem.

The decline in the curve is a result of factors such as the incompatibility of work and family duties, the stigmas surrounding women working outside the home, and the high incomes of their spouses rendering their contribution to family income negligible.

In India, female labour force participation rates are 22 points below their expected level on the curve. While there are several factors which contribute to these numbers, internal migration must be recognised as one of the key factors which deters the entry of women into the higher education, skilling and employment ecosystems.

Women and migration

Census 2011 revealed that women form almost 70 percent of the internal migrant community.

For migrants in the 20-34 age group 38.5 percent of men have cited cause for migration as ‘work/employment’, while only 2.7 percent of women say the same. The numbers are reversed when we observe ‘marriage’ as a cause for migration, with an average of 3.1 percent men, and 71.2 percent women.

The contrast between the numbers reflects a pattern: men migrating for work/employment, and their wives migrating with them. While it is probable that these women may have found employment later, work wasn’t the trigger for their migration.

One could speculate based on these numbers, that while the Indian community hasn’t resisted the idea of women moving out of their native homes to other regions, the resistance for mobility of women arises when the reason is non-marriage related.

Challenges surrounding migration and the subsequent hesitation to migrate, are often cited as the main bottlenecks that affects the impact of educational and employment initiatives like Skill India, for women.

When it comes to migration, women face both social and structural barriers

1. Agency: A women often must seek the approval of her father, brother, husband, in-laws, and sometimes the village panchayat, in order to work or learn skills which might make her employable, while still bearing the almost sole responsibility of caring for her children.

2. Technology: A smart phone can be the tool for acquiring a variety of skills, the medium for financial flexibility, a source for exploring opportunities and finding jobs, and much more. However, several recent studies by LIRNE Asia, Pew Research and GSMA have all consistently affirmed that in India, a significant percentage of Indian women are restricted from using smart-phones and accessing the internet, making it all the more challenging for them to leverage the benefits of technology.

3. Women and the workplace: Informal workers from low income backgrounds, especially migrants, do not have basic entitlements such as identity documentation, housing, and financial services. Migrant women are additionally subject to gender-centric challenges, which includes lower pay compared to their male counterparts.

Women have limited opportunities as they are restricted to ‘traditional’ jobs which are closely linked to typical ideas of what women can and cannot do. According to a 2018 McKinsey Global Institute report, India could add up to USD 770 billion to its GDP—more than 18 percent, if it simply advances gender parity in work and society.

Discrimination of women in the workplace takes numerous forms ranging from the absence of maternity benefits to sexual harassment at the workplace. In a sample of Skill India participants, 62 percent of unemployed women reported that they were willing to migrate for work, but 70 percent said they would feel unsafe working away from home (IHDS, 2012). The acute lack of female leadership has made the informal labour sector a non-aspirational one for women, resulting in the sector becoming a male-dominated game.

4. Urban planning and policy: Below is an excerpt from the Census 2011 document, which lists the criteria for recognising an area as a Census Town.

“A minimum population of 5,000; At least 75 percent of the male main working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits; and a density of population of at least 400 persons per sq. km.”

By definition therefore, the system is choosing to not focus on the number of unemployed or employed women, essentially rendering their contribution to the economy invisible.

This definition has been in place since 1971, was active in 2011 when the last Census was undertaken, and continues to remain unchanged. There were 3,894 areas defined as census towns in Census 2011. If we were to modify the definition to include women as a part of the ‘main working population’, chances are those numbers would be considerably different.

If such exclusion exists in policy documents, how can one expect reforms to trickle down into action?

What are the implications of these barriers?

Women have limited opportunities as they are restricted to ‘traditional’ jobs which are closely linked to typical ideas of what women can and cannot do. According to a 2018 McKinsey Global Institute report, India could add up to USD 770 billion to its GDP—more than 18 percent, if it simply advances gender parity in work and society.

The above narratives tell us that when it comes to women migrating for work, social norms become excuses to delay structural reform, and in turn, these institutional barriers prevent community mindset change. This results in a perpetual cycle, thus, reinforcing the existing status quo.

What are the solutions to correcting these wrongs?

The multi-faceted nature of this challenge makes it a tough one to tackle. But the good news is that there are organisations that have been working to drive change. Based on their work, below are some strategies that need to be adopted and scaled by corporates, nonprofits and other stakeholders.

1. Childcare support

“The starting point of increasing women’s workforce participation is recognising that they are primary caregivers”, says Namya Mahajan, Managing Director of SEWA Federation.

SEWA runs 13 childcare centres in Ahmedabad with about 30 children per center, allowing women to take up better paying jobs and spend longer hours working. “We have seen women’s income increase by more than 50 percent on an average”, adds Mahajan.

2. Technology-based interventions

“Bringing digital devices into a village, helps not just women get access to content for learning new skills, it also changes the nature of learning within the community”, says Medha Uniyal, Program Director of Pratham Institute.

Since 2016, Pratham has been able to connect over 35,000 women to access to smart devices and digital content, through various skilling interventions in rural areas. These women have gone on to start their own beauty parlours, run tailoring classes, and even work as mechanics in cities, dispelling misconceptions surrounding women and technology.

3. Women as entrepreneurial leaders

“We have noticed high rates of attrition when it comes to women in informal labour, especially given that the informal sector is marred with several issues like low pay and exploitation. And so, we believe, there is a growing need to foster self-employment,” says Poulomi Pal, Deputy General Manager at Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL).

By partnering with several non-profits, the GCPL Salon-i programme has reached out to 1300 salon micro-entrepreneurs who are in turn reaching out to 90,000 women, building their capacity in technical skills and financial literacy. The spillover benefits which are triggered by empowering women to run their own enterprises, contributes to bringing about changes in the workplace ecosystem.

4. Advocacy

“It is important to recognise the economic contribution of women migrants – both within the country and abroad. This is the key prerequisite for removing the barriers to female migration while safeguarding their rights and welfare”, says Varun Agarwal, CEO of Indian Migration Now.

At this juncture, we need policies to tackle the structural barriers which prevent women from being recognised as key component of the budding Indian workforce. India Migration Now works towards this end through, a comprehensive set of migration research, policy and media projects.

While it may not be possible to change norms overnight, now more than ever there is a need for collective ownership and constructive solutions.

Stakeholders working on women and economic development need to focus their attention on resolving structural problems around migration, which is key to allowing women to pursue education, skilling and employment pathways.

Annette Francis works with Pratham’s vocational training and entrepreneurship arm known as Pratham Institute. She currently focuses on research and innovation projects being pioneered by the organisation. Her primary area of interest is researching technology-based solutions for mitigating challenges in the development sector, specifically within the livelihood and education space. She has previously worked in a teaching capacity with nonprofit and for-profit organisations based in India and Scotland.

Dheeraj Dubey is a documentary filmmaker currently working with the vocational skilling arm of Pratham, on media and research projects. His key area of interest lies in the study of visual mediums such as film and imagery. He has previously worked on various documentary films under the ambit of education, art and livelihoods.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/03/women-work-migration/feed/0The Geneva Centre reiterates the importance of fully including women in the labour market and in all spheres of society on the occasion of International Women’s Dayhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/03/geneva-centre-reiterates-importance-fully-including-women-labour-market-spheres-society-occasion-international-womens-day/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=geneva-centre-reiterates-importance-fully-including-women-labour-market-spheres-society-occasion-international-womens-day
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/03/geneva-centre-reiterates-importance-fully-including-women-labour-market-spheres-society-occasion-international-womens-day/#respondFri, 08 Mar 2019 18:39:17 +0000Geneva Centrehttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=160530On the occasion of the observance of the 2019 International Women’s Day, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue reiterated the urgent need to intensify efforts towards achieving gender equality in all spheres of society, eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls, and promoting women’s political and economic empowerment. The […]

On the occasion of the observance of the 2019 International Women’s Day, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue reiterated the urgent need to intensify efforts towards achieving gender equality in all spheres of society, eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls, and promoting women’s political and economic empowerment.

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change1 , aligned with the 63rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), bound to start next week in New York and dedicated this year to access to social protection systems and public services, and sustainable infrastructure for gender equality.

These themes highlight the importance of changing mind-sets and attitudes, and put innovation, by women and girls and for women and girls, at the heart of efforts towards reaching gender equality. According to Ambassador Jazairy, Executive Director of the Geneva Centre, “This year’s focus of International Women’s Day enhances the importance of using new technologies to empower women worldwide, to increase their access to the labour market and to high education, but also promotes respect and recognition of women as an incredible well of innovation themselves, in science, education, politics and all fields of societies.”

In this regard, the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre reiterated the importance of recognizing the capacities and the potential of women worldwide, particularly in the labor market, and the important positive impact that achieving gender equality could have on the world economy. In her latest book Fifty Million Rising, Saadia Zahidi, a Member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum (WEF), described how, in the last 10 years alone, nearly 50 million Muslim women entered the workforce gaining greater autonomy. Furthermore, Zahidi calculated that if female labor participation rose to Western levels, the GDP of many Middle East regions would spike dramatically. 2

Nevertheless, the numbers showed by WEF in their latest Global Gender Gap Report show that progress is very slow: a 32 % average gender gap remains to be closed worldwide, affecting countries irrespective of their culture, religion or location. Moreover, despite important efforts towards empowering women, the Arab region continues to rank poorly on the overall Global Gender Index with an overall gender gap of almost 40%. Ambassador Jazairy deplored the important gender wage gap that remained pervasive worldwide. The EU recently released a Eurostat study which shows gaps of up to 24 % in some of its Member States, and concluded that the average in the EU is of 11,5%.

He reiterated that these findings are showcasing the persistence of important invisible barriers, particularly in the labor market worldwide that prevent women from breaking the famous glass ceiling completely. As noted by LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue during a debate entitled “A quantum leap for gender equality: for a better future of work for all”, organized by the International Labor Organization on 8 March 2019, in the private sector and public sector alike, networking is crucial for advancing and obtaining managerial positions. Nevertheless, as these networks remain for the most part male-dominated, women are at a disadvantage, which is just one explanation to having merely 34% women managers worldwide.

Ambassador Jazairy underlined the importance of men leaders acknowledging issues of unconscious bias and subtle discrimination occurring in the workforce, and taking a strong stand to condemn any form of discrimination, by championing equal treatment of women and men, by mentoring women and by ensuring equal opportunities for advancement.

Furthermore, the Director of the Geneva Centre underscored the importance of changing mind-sets in order to fully achieve gender equality. Whilst numerous countries around the world have adopted exemplary legal frameworks for equality and women’s rights, concrete results show a level of progress that is, according to a report released by UN Women3 , unacceptably low measured against the objective of SDG 5 on gender equality. Ambassador Jazairy emphasized that without grappling with the gender roles and stereotypical norms that still dictate the world of work today worldwide, no real progress will be achieved, despite the adoption of legislation and policies towards equality. Laws are only successful if they bring real change in the life of people, and it is necessary to shift hearts and minds in order to increase their efficiency.”

Finally, as the UN and other international organizations are celebrating this year 100 years of multilateralism in Geneva, Ambassador Jazairy remarked today, 19 years after the adoption of the famous UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, the participation of women in peace and multilateralism remains too low and the goal of equality in this field is still remote. From the UN Charter to the First UN Conference on Women held in Mexico in 1975, to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted in 1995, as well as the UN Security Council Resolutions adopted to promote the women, peace and security agenda, a long road has been travelled and there has been progress in this regard rhetorically, if not always in a commensurate manner, in practice.

However, Ambassador Jazairy remarked, gender equality is not a nicety or a favor made to women, it is a smart move for everyone, including in multilateralism. In times of conflict, women play a crucial role in sustaining livelihoods and ensuring the cohesiveness of communities. When they are given a seat at the table, they increase the legitimacy of peace processes. Furthermore, a recent report on nuclear security negotiations showed that women’s presence in decision-making had improved the process, by adding more emphasis on collaboration and on increased innovation.4

The Geneva Centre marked International Women’s Day by organizing a debate and book presentation as a side-event to the 40th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, entitled Muslim women between stereotypes and reality: an objective narrative. The two publications launched on this occasion, entitled Women’s Rights in the Arab Region: Between Myth and Reality and Veiling /Unveiling: The Headscarf in Christianity, Judaism and Islam are available for ordering.